MingW x Visual Studio compiler

[john_god]

Which is the best compiler mingw 32 or visual studio compiler ?
What are the differences in the exe files, are they smaler, slower, faster ?

[stefan]

First diference i noticed is size of build
msvc: 2.1 GB
gcc: 5.5 GB
for example - lib files:

Name         Extension  Size        Attributes
QtGui.lib    lib        34,541,666  ---A----  
QtGui.prl    prl             1,122  ---A----  
QtGuid.lib   lib        65,311,050  ---A----  
QtGuid.prl   prl             1,116  ---A----  
 
Name         Extension  Size        Attributes
libQtGui.a   a          18,215,764  ---A----
libQtGui4.a  a           7,926,574  ---A----
libQtGuid.a  a         469,069,964  ---A----
libQtGuid4.a a           8,841,350  ---A----

Name         Extension  Size        Attributes
QtGui.lib    lib        34,541,666  ---A----  
QtGui.prl    prl             1,122  ---A----  
QtGuid.lib   lib        65,311,050  ---A----  
QtGuid.prl   prl             1,116  ---A----  

Name         Extension  Size        Attributes
libQtGui.a   a          18,215,764  ---A----
libQtGui4.a  a           7,926,574  ---A----
libQtGuid.a  a         469,069,964  ---A----
libQtGuid4.a a           8,841,350  ---A----

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this is how i configured build:

configure -platform win32-msvc2005 -static -debug-and-release -fast -qt-sql-sqlite -no-qt3support -vcproj
configure -platform win32-g++ -static -debug-and-release -fast -qt-sql-sqlite -no-qt3support

configure -platform win32-msvc2005 -static -debug-and-release -fast -qt-sql-sqlite -no-qt3support -vcproj
configure -platform win32-g++ -static -debug-and-release -fast -qt-sql-sqlite -no-qt3support

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and commented demos and examples in projects.pro

i do not know why i such a huge diference beetween build size.

one more thing, it's seems that gcc is slower (judgeing on qt build time).

[macbeth]

another thing is that AFAIK mingw can not use MMX, SSE(2) and other CPU optimizations, so the libraries are probably slower a little bit...