Upgrading MinGW on Windows

Upgrading GCC in MinGW to the latest version is easily accomplished.  Simply start the MSYS Shell and run the following commands (this worked on the MinGW installs on both Windows XP and 7):

mingw-get update
mingw-get upgrade

Use the command g++ --version to verify that GCC 4.8.1 has been installed.  Installing MinGW with the Qt libraries has been previously covered (see the Windows tagged posts).  However, it is probably be a good idea to update the procedure and repeat for Window 8 since only Windows XP and 7 were covered previously.  Plus, there are newer versions of Qt and MinGW.  Specifically I will provide the installation procedure for Windows 8.1 update 1, which I have running in a virtual machine.  All the tools necessary will be covered, including MinGW, Qt for MinGW, CMake and git in the following posts.

I obtained Windows 8 Pro via their $40 upgrade offer, otherwise I would not have bothered.  On my Windows 8.1 installation, I have Classic Shell installed.  This is not necessarily because I don't like the Modern (AKA Metro) UI, but it's just contrary works to the way I like to work.  In Classic Shell, I use the Classic start menu style as I don't like the Window 7 start menu style (I use the Classic Shell on Windows 7 for the same purpose).  Procedures for the classic start menu style and the start screen will be provided when appropriate.