What's the problem with compiling GNU Octave with MinGW? I know lots of people and there are prejudices against MinGW, but I could never find any arguments against MinGW except the usual blah that you hear from VS fanboys.. I think it does not matter whether one or the other compiler produces better code (although that is arguable and you will find "benchmarks" to prove either one or the other opinion), but it is very important GNU Octave can be brought to other platforms with mere free software. Using Visual Studio would undermine this.