Protobuf in windows under MinGW

Trying to compile and use google's protobuf in MinGW in windows - it is a dependency for a program I need to install.

I got the protobuf source and used msys' bash to run "configure", but the output from the configure hangs at a specific point.

protobuf-2.6.0>sh configure

checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... yes
checking build system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking host system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking target system type... i686-pc-mingw32
checking for a BSD-compatible install... ./install-sh -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /usr/bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)...