Linux to Windows: x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc will not compile a 64-bit executable, how can I resolve this? [duplicate] - linux

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This question already has answers here:
What is the bit size of long on 64-bit Windows?
(8 answers)
Determining 32 vs 64 bit in C++
(16 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
I am using Debian 9 (stable) and I recently decided to install mingw-w64 so that I could do cross platform C/++ development since I don't have consistent access to a Windows machine. When I had first installed it a couple days ago to test out doing 32 and 64-bit builds, it seemed to work but now the 64-bit command (x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc) seems to only put out 32-bit executables despite the fact that it should only put out 64-bit by default. I even explicitly declared the options -m64 and -march=x86_64 in an attempt to force it, but it seems like no matter what I try now it will only do a 32-bit build.
For reference, all the code consists of is three files: hello.c, hellofunc.c, and hellofunc.h. The file hello.c simply calls a function defined in hellofunc.c called printHelloWorld:
void printHelloWorld(void){
long z;
printf("Hello World!\n");
switch(sizeof(z)){
case 4:
printf("This program is 32-bit\n");
break;
case 8:
printf("This program is 64-bit\n");
break;
default:
printf("This program is of unknown bit size\n");
}
printf("Long int size is %i bytes long!\n", sizeof(z));
}
With the expected output being "This program is 32-bit" or 64-bit, with an explicit statement showing the byte length of a long variable. The problem I am having is that despite the fact that the 64-bit mingw-w64 gcc command is being used, when I do test it on Windows it will display the 32-bit message and a byte length of 4 instead of the expected 8.
Again, when I initially tested it right after download it worked as expected and I have no idea what could have changed the default functionality of it over the last couple of days- I didn't install anything new, and all I was doing was trying to work with makefiles (this directory does not contain one though). Also, for the record, the default gcc native to my Debian system works perfectly well with the -m32 and -m64 commands so it's not like my system isn't capable of it and... in fact, if anything, I would expect the behavior to be backwards as Linux seems to require special set-up to do 32-bit builds or run 32-bit programs on a 64-bit machine.
For the last attempt to understand the problem myself I ran the command x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -v -o hello.exe hello.c hellofunc.c -I . so that I could get the full command sequence of the compiler, and I also ran gcc on it as well. Here is the full output I put on pastebin just for reference. I don't 100% understand the output, but it seriously looks like all the configuration and options should be outputting 64-bit?? I don't know, I'm still pretty new to Linux and still don't entirely understand how to dissect when something goes wrong- especially when something runs counter to the explicitly defined functionality lol.
If somebody could recommend possible fixes for this or alternatives I probably didn't think of, I would really appreciate. I tried Googling for answers before hand, but x86_64-w64-ming32-gcc seems to only ever come up in conversation to tell newbies that it's the obvious default way to compile for 64-bit architecture.
Thanks for reading and any help you can give, cheers~