Setting up the build environment on Windows
Assuming Windows XP 32. We will use MinGW to build the libraries and application and MSYS as a working environment.
The distinction between MinGW and MSYS is very important: MinGW is a set of compilers and libraries you use to build Windows applications, while MSYS is an emulated GNU environment similar to (and, in fact, based on) Cygwin. You can not use MSYS libraries in your Windows application. This means that you will sometimes have two copies of a particular library: an MSYS version used by MSYS tools, and a native version built with MinGW and used by MinGW tools and / or your application.
Directories
We will install MinGW into C:\MinGW
and MSYS into C:\MSYS
.
MSYS maps Unix-like paths to Windows paths: /
translates to C:\MSYS
and /mingw
translates to C:\MinGW
. In addition, all Windows drives will show up as /x
, where x
corresponds to the drive letter, so /c/windows
translates to C:\windows
, etc.
We will install our libraries and applications into C:\met.no
. You should start by creating that directory and the required subdirectories:
C:\> mkdir met.no C:\> mkdir met.no\bin C:\> mkdir met.no\include C:\> mkdir met.no\lib C:\> mkdir met.no\share C:\> mkdir met.no\copyright
Subversion
Doesn't really matter which one. Certified binaries of The Real McCoy are available at http://www.collab.net/downloads/subversion/ (command-line only) if you have an account (or are willing to register). There are other (non-certified) sources such as SlikSVN (http://www.sliksvn.com/en/download, command-line only) and TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads, with Windows Explorer integration, which is really neat).
MinGW
Download and the latest automated installer from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/Automated%20MinGW%20Installer/ and run it. Ask for the current version (not previous or candidate). Select these components and these components only: base tools, g++ compiler, g77 compiler.
As of 2009-11-20, the current MinGW version is 5.1.6, which includes GCC 3.4.5.
tip: move the installer into an empty directory before starting it; it will download all the MinGW distribution files into that directory.
At this point, you may want to download bsdtar from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MinGW%20Utilities/basic%20bsdtar/bsdtar-2.7.900a_r1628-20091110/ and install bsdtar.exe
as /mingw/bin/tar
. It supports a wider range of archive formats and compression algorithms than GNU tar, and automatically detects which one to use.
You may want to install InfoZip's zip
utility as well, since bsdtar
can extract zip files but not create them: download the source code from http://sourceforge.net/projects/infozip/files/, extract it, and run the following commands in the source directory:
$ make -f win32/makefile.gcc $ cp zip.exe /mingw/bin
MSYS
Download the MSYS installer from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20Base%20System/ and run it (you will need administrator privileges). Accept the default answer to all questions.
As of 2009-11-20, the latest MSYS version is 1.0.11.
Testing the toolchain
Let's see if our C compiler works:
$ which gcc /mingw/bin/gcc.exe $ gcc --version gcc.exe (GCC) 3.4.5 (mingw-vista special r3) Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. $ cat >hello.c #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf("Hello, C world!\n"); return 0; } ^D $ gcc -o hello hello.c $ ./hello.exe Hello, C world!
And C++:
$ which g++ /mingw/bin/g++.exe $ g++ --version g++.exe (GCC) 3.4.5 (mingw-vista special r3) Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. $ cat >hello.cc #include <iostream> int main() { std::cout << "Hello, C++ world!" << std::endl; return 0; } ^D $ g++ -o hello hello.cc $ ./hello.exe Hello, C++ world!
And Fortran 77:
$ which g77 /mingw/bin/g77.exe $ g77 --version GNU Fortran (GCC) 3.4.5 (mingw-vista special r3) Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GNU Fortran comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. You may redistribute copies of GNU Fortran under the terms of the GNU General Public License. For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING or type the command `info -f g77 Copying'. $ cat >hello.f PROGRAM HELLOW WRITE(UNIT=*, FMT=*) 'Hello, Fortran world!' END ^D $ g77 -o hello hello.f $ ./hello.exe Hello, Fortran world!
lex & yacc
Or rather, in our brave GNU world, flex and bison. There is a problem here: you can't use the MSYS versions, because they're not just build tools—bison includes a runtime library (liby
). Hence we need native versions of both tools. We can get those from GnuWin32.
Download the following files from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/:
- the
bin
,lib
anddep
zipfiles for the latest bison release (thedep
zipfile contains a few libraries that bison needs, so you won't have to install them separately) - the
bin
andlib
zipfiles for the latest flex release
For some unfathomable reason, both the flex and bison lib
zipfiles contain incorrect copies of <unistd.h>
. Either make a backup copy of /MinGW/include/unistd.h
before you unpack them, or tell unzip
(or bsdtar
) not to overwrite existing files:
$ tar -kxf bison-2.4.1-lib.zip -C /MinGW
This will install a shell script called /MinGW/bin/yacc
which incorrectly redirects to c:/progra~1/bison/bin/bison
. Edit it so the entire script looks like this:
#! /bin/sh exec /mingw/bin/bison -y "$@"
WiX
Microsoft's tool for creating installation packages: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/files/. Ironically, it does not come with its own installer.