For anyone interested, here is the process I used to successfully build OpenCV 2.4.8 with MingW on Windows 8 (64 bit) and setup Eclipse for development.

• Download MingW 32-bit from MingW Website or MingW SourceForge Repository
• Download OpenCV from OpenCV Website (Windows version).
• Download CMake from CMake Website
• Extract the downloaded files into their corresponding folders. Folder structure on my PC is as follows:
  • C:\opencv
  • C:\cmake
  • C:\mingw
• Add C:\mingw\bin directory to system PATH
• Open CMake executable and select Source Code=C:/opencv/sources, and Destination=C:/opencv/mingw. Click on ‘Configure’ button and make sure that ‘MingW Makefiles’ option is selected. Click ‘Configure’ again and then click on the ‘Generate’ button.
• Open Windows command line and type ‘cd C:/opencv/mingw’, then type ‘mingw32-make’. Once build process completes successfully, close the command line window.
• Open Eclipse and create a sample project (You can use following code to test):

#include <opencv2/core/core.hpp>
#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>
#include <opencv2/opencv.hpp>
#include <iostream>


using namespace std;
using namespace cv;

int main()
{

Mat img = imread(“c:/lenna.png”, CV_LOAD_IMAGE_COLOR);

namedWindow(“MyWindow”, CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE);
imshow(“MyWindow”, img);

waitKey(0);
return 0;
}

• Now, go to Project -> Properties -> C/C++ Build -> Settings -> MinGW C++ Linker -> Libraries, and add to the Libraries (-l) one by one, in Eclipse:
  • libopencv_calib3d248, libopencv_contrib248, libopencv_core248, libopencv_features2d248, libopencv_flann248 so and so on, depending on your code references.
  • Then add C:\opencv\mingw\lib under the Library search path (-L)
• Build the project and watch out for any errors in the Eclipse console. Good Luck and Happy Coding!