https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=108865
--- Comment #33 from Costas Argyris <costas.argyris at gmail dot com> --- It should be noted that with the current implementation, windres (part of binutils) is mandatory when building for the mingw (Windows) hosts, both 32 and 64-bit versions. That is, a build failure will occur if windres is not found for the mingw hosts. This means that for these hosts, gcc will *always* be built with UTF-8 as its active code page on Windows, thereby eliminating the need to have a way to query the active code page as a user. If for example, it could be built either with or without windres, then the active code page would also be conditional on that, so users would need a way to tell what is the active code page being used by a given gcc.exe or g++.exe executable. By having windres be a mandatory build tool for the mingw hosts, this is not a requirement because the answer will always be UTF-8 (otherwise the build would have failed). This is all relevant for gcc 13 or later (as per Target Milestone above) and a minimum Windows Version 1903 (May 2019 Update). If gcc is 13 or later but Windows version is earlier than the minimum target version, gcc will not be using UTF-8 as its active code page on its own - it will still be possible to make it though by applying the UTF-8 manifest with mt.exe manually, or by checking the Windows checkbox that sets UTF-8 globally.
