Installation steps for getting a functional Clang++ build running on Windows 8 and MinGW.

Step 1

Install MinGW. Using mingw-get-inst-20120426.exe go with the pre-packaged repository catalogues, which bundles in GCC 4.6.1 as opposed to 4.7.x, which at the time of writing Clang does not support seemlessly. You will need the C Compiler, C++ Compiler, MSYS Basic System and MinGW Developer Toolkit MinGW packages.

Step 2

Python 2.x. Install the Python Interpreter and Libraries into c:\MinGW\bin.

##Step 3 Install Subversion. I went with the Subversion 1.7.7 (Windows 64-bit) package from CollabNet.

Checkout LLVM:

cd C:\mingw\msys\1.0
mkdir src
cd src
svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk llvm

Checkout Clang:

cd llvm/tools
svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk clang
cd ../..

Checkout Compiler-RT:

cd llvm/projects
svn co http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/compiler-rt/trunk compiler-rt
cd ../..

##Step 4 C++ headers and libraries. Clang will attempt to automatically probe MinGW’s directory structure for set of supported libstdc++ paths. For 32-bit i686-w64-mingw32, and 64-bit x86_64-w64-mingw32, Clang assumes as below:

some_directory/bin/gcc.exe
some_directory/bin/clang.exe
some_directory/bin/clang++.exe
some_directory/bin/../include/c++/GCC_version
some_directory/bin/../include/c++/GCC_version/x86_64-w64-mingw32
some_directory/bin/../include/c++/GCC_version/i686-w64-mingw32
some_directory/bin/../include/c++/GCC_version/backward
some_directory/bin/../x86_64-w64-mingw32/include
some_directory/bin/../i686-w64-mingw32/include
some_directory/bin/../include

This probing logic can be found in InitHeaderSearch.cpp located here C:\mingw\msys\1.0\src\llvm\tools\clang\lib\Frontend\InitHeaderSearch.cpp.

... //line 374
switch (os) {
case llvm::Triple::Linux:
case llvm::Triple::Win32:
  llvm_unreachable("Include management is handled in the driver.");

case llvm::Triple::Cygwin:
  // Cygwin-1.7
  AddMinGWCPlusPlusIncludePaths("/usr/lib/gcc", "i686-pc-cygwin", "4.5.3");
  AddMinGWCPlusPlusIncludePaths("/usr/lib/gcc", "i686-pc-cygwin", "4.3.4");
  // g++-4 / Cygwin-1.5
  AddMinGWCPlusPlusIncludePaths("/usr/lib/gcc", "i686-pc-cygwin", "4.3.2");
  break;
case llvm::Triple::MinGW32:
  // mingw-w64 C++ include paths (i686-w64-mingw32 and x86_64-w64-mingw32)
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.5.0");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.5.1");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.5.2");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.5.3");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.5.4");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.6.0");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.6.1");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.6.2");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.6.3");
  AddMinGW64CXXPaths(HSOpts.ResourceDir, "4.7.0");
...

Ensure that the version of gcc that your MinGW installer used, matches a supported version (e.g. 4.6.2 is my case) by looking here C:\mingw\lib\gcc\mingw32\4.6.2.

If your version of gcc does not seem to be supported automatically, Clang will be usable to resolve standard libraries and headers - you want this. Some popular way to help Clang find these (if it doesn’t already):

  1. Specify the --with-gcc-toolchain configure option (prior to build) to tell Clang where the gcc containing the desired libstdc++ is installed.
  2. Create a symbolic link, e.g. if you have 4.7.2 and only upto 4.7.0 is in the auto probe logic, create a 4.7.0 symbolic link to 4.7.2.
  3. Modify InitHeaderSearch.cpp to your specific environment prior to building Clang.

##Step 5 Build. Using a MinGW shell. Credits to Pete for this.

cd /src
mkdir build
cd build
export CC=gcc
export CXX=g++
../llvm/configure --disable-docs --enable-optimized --enable-targets=x86,x86_64 --prefix=/mingw
make
make install

##Step 6 Take Clang++ for a test drive. Create foo.cpp:

#include <iostream>
int main() {
    std::cotut << "Hello World"; //typo
    return 0;
}

and Clang it clang++ foo.cpp

test.cpp:4:7: error: no member named 'cotut' in namespace 'std'; did you mean 'cout'?
        std::cotut << "Hello World";
        ~~~~~^~~~~
             cout
/usr/include/c++/4.2.1/iostream:63:18: note: 'cout' declared here
  extern ostream cout;          ///< Linked to standard output

For a nice intro to Clang, checkout Chandler Carruth’s GoingNative 2012 lecture Clang: Defending C++ from Murphy’s Million Monkeys