Help configuring gcc

[Luke Dickens <lwd03 at doc dot ic dot ac dot uk>]

Hi,

I apologise in advance if this is the wrong place to ask this question, 
but I couldn't find any suitable forums.

I am trying to fathom the installation procedure for gcc-core and 
gcc-g++ on Windows XP and I think I must be missing something. So far I 
have done the following:

- I have installed a programme called MSyS onto my machine. Which seems 
to give me a posix style command line that I can run. I have installed 
this in C:Program Files\msys.
- I then installed a programme called MingW32, which I believe to be a 
c-compiler in binary form. Now as I understand things gcc is itself a 
c-compiler, so I don't really understand why this step is needed. If 
someone can compile a c-compiler elsewhere (MingW32) then why can't they 
compile gcc in the same way, or am I missing something. Anyway, for 
reasons I can no longer remember I installed MingW32 in a subdirectory 
of the msys folder, i.e. C:Program Files\msys\1.0\mingw, I no longer 
know whether this was accidental or intentional.
- I then downloaded the gcc-core.tar.bz2 and gcc-g++.tar.bz2 and copied 
these into my home directory under msys, so C:Program 
Files\msys\1.0\home\Luke in windows parlance, but this appears as 
/home/Luke or simply ~ in msys command line.
- I unzipped them both into a gcc-4.2.0 folder, and then created a 
subdirectory srcdir and moved all the unzipped files and folders into 
this directory. Then made another directory objdir. So my home directory 
now looks like this

/home/Luke/gcc-4.2.0
                     |---------- srcdir
                     |                    |-------- ...
                     |                    \-------- <all the other 
files/folders from the tarballs>
                     |
                     \---------- objdir


- Then I try to run configure and I get the following error:
Luke@GODEL ~/gcc-4.2.0/srcdir
$ cd ../objdir/

Luke@GODEL ~/gcc-4.2.0/objdir
$ ../srcdir/configure  
loading cache ./config.cache
checking host system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking target system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking build system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking for a BSD compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking whether ln works... yes
checking whether ln -s works... no
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
configure: error: no acceptable cc found in $PATH

Now I understand what this is telling me. It is telling me that there is 
no binary  file called gcc or cc which can be used, because the path 
doesn't point towards any folder that contains such a binary. But the 
reason I am doing all this is to get a gcc compiler. It is all very 
confusing and I would greatly appreciate any help/advice on the issue. I 
have looked for a suitable gcc file under mingw32 but this didn't seem 
to come with one.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Luke