Embeddable GCC

Is there a small version of GCC for shipping with Windows program? Because Mingw installation takes frigging gigabyte, including a lot of bloat, like C++ and fortran compiler, with useless crap, like directx bindings.

And it makes me wonder, a function can't return an array, but if a function can return a struct, can it just return a struct containing nothing but an array?

Yes.
struct k {
char foo[256];
} myfunfunc() {
struct k ks = { "Foo!" };
return ks;
}
A function "returning" a struct actually gets converted to a function having a pointer to a struct as its first parameter:
struct k {
char foo[256];
} *myfunfunc(struct k *_ret) {
struct k ks = { "Foo!" };
memcpy(_ret, &ks, sizeof(ks));
return _ret;
}
Those two above should compile to byte-identical code, and at least in MSVC6, they do.