MinGW/MSYS2 native build support on Windows

This is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately since I remember SMC used to use Windows almost exclusively for it's development before FluXy left and had everything needed to make compiling easy on Windows. The project has always been easy to compile on Linux due to it's (really amazing) package management system. This issue is mainly geared toward making Windows native compilation easier and more welcoming for attracting Windows developers.

P.S. Off topic but Linux made me realize how nice having a package management system really is... One click updates for everything :)

[datahead8888]

Yeah...we really should figure out the steps to get it to build in Visual Studio again. This will attract a number of programmers who prefer Windows development.

We will need to outline the steps to use CMake with Visual Studio (and it would be nice if we found a plugin so that people could point and click in Visual Studio and have CMakeLists.txt updated for them).

My copy of Visual Studio is an academic copy from the University, so I may need to double check my licensing before doing much with it. There is also an express copy of Visual Studio out there, but I'm not sure if I can easily run both.

Another issue that will come up is whether people who are developing on Windows can (or should) test Linux building. We're currently verifying that MXE cross-builds work correctly each time we push something to the repository from Linux. People strictly developing from Windows will not be able to do for this for Linux without either installing Linux or using a virtual machine.

I haven't looked for any plugins for Visual Studio regarding CMake yet... The main troubles I've encountered so far is building the dependencies themselves since the pre-built binaries for Windows I've found floating around are extremely out of date.

I have had success before running different versions of the Express editions on one system, however if you're not sure, the Windows 10 Tech Preview is available for free until it expires in May-ish for anyone who wants to test it.

[datahead8888]

There are some tools on Windows similar to apt-get:
https://chocolatey.org/

If you're able to document the dependency steps, I'd be interested in setting it up on my machine at some point in the near future.  I like to use Visual Studio's debugging tools.

[Quintus]

I will look into building SMC natively on Windows with MinGW sometime, but I’m currently waiting for them to officially support GCC 4.9. Once they do, we can use all the nifty features C++11 gives us.

Vale,
Quintus

[datahead8888]

@dlpenguinlover - would you be interested in Visual Studio support in the long term?

I can't look into it now, but if the dependency issues are resolved on Windows it may become feasible.

MinGW would also be good, especially given that it's open source.

I'd be willing to look into it. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to get CMake to find libraries and includes on Windows... I've gotten it to find rake, gperf, rake, and the other binaries that it requires. I'll mess around with dependencies after I get that worked out.

MinGW I've heard is an amazing environment to work in, I just don't know anything about it. I'll be sure to do some research on that as well.

On Oct 6, 2014, at 6:18 PM, datahead8888 notifications@github.com wrote:

@dlpenguinlover - would you be interested in Visual Studio support in the long term?

I can't look into it now, but if the dependency issues are resolved on Windows it may become feasible.

MinGW would also be good, especially given that it's open source.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[datahead8888]

If we can support both Visual Studio AND MinGW...we'll have power at our fingertips...
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[Bugsbane]

I know almost nothing of compiling on Windows, but I will say that while I am a big supporter of the idea that extending to Windows / MacOS can give a project more reach and developers, that every single time I've followed a Linux only project extending to native Windows support, they've always been amazed at how horrible the experience was, how many undocumented bugs there are, how horrible the tools are and how much longer it took than expected. If we plan on undertaking this, I would definitely talk this through with Jonathon from OpenShot and/or Boud from Krita. I know they worked through a lot of the hard issues before.

There be dragons here.

[datahead8888]

As far as I know the old Secret Maryo Chronicles did work in Visual Studio. We would just have to get to a point of having good, documented procedures and check if any code compatibility issues have someone cropped up. Checking with someone from another project is not a bad idea at all, though.

[Bugsbane]

Cool. Sounds good.

[Quintus]

Let me clarify: TSC already runs on Windows. The beta4 has an installer that actually works. The Windows binaries are created by means of crosscompilation from Linux to Windows, where the toolchain (MXE) is based on MinGW.

I’m currently trying to do a native compilation of TSC on Windows with MinGW. It turns out that it is a nearly infinite amount of work, because you have to compile all the dependencies. I’m currently working on smpeg, a dependency of SDL_mixer. After that, SDL_ttf, FreeImage, and CEGUI are still needed (with dependencies), then everything is there. I’m working on that since yesterday morning, and compiling all these stuff takes eternity on Windows. Plus sometimes obscure linking errors occur.

Valete,
Quintus

[datahead8888]

Quintus, it's probably better to focus on the release now than get MinGW working. It would be nice to have support for it, but the release is a really big deal for the project now.

[Quintus]

Quintus, it's probably better to focus on the release now than get MinGW working. It would be nice to have support for it, but the release is a really big deal for the project now.

Probably you are right. Nevertheless, I would like to post my progress. I have successfully built ALL of TSC’s dependencies with MinGW. Read that again. It took two days. I also successfully compiled TSC, but it failed to link with thousands of linking errors I am too exhausted to fix. During the attempt I wrote a file where I noted all the steps I took to reach this state. The file is available via Gist if you want to give it a shot also.

If anyone of you feels like dealing with missing -static switches or wrong order of libraries in the linking commandline (Windows GCC is very picky about that one), then just try. Any corrections to CMakeLists.txt are greatly appreciated (and you will have to edit that file heavily for a native Windows build I fear).

Some notes:

• I used a 32-bit Windows 7 to do this.
• I used MinGW with MSYS, which is part of the MinGW project and provides a bash and other UNIX-like environment for building. Note it does not emulate UNIX as Cygwin does; it is merely intended to comfort the person building all the stuff as it is way superior to the Windows CMD; the resulting binaries can be run without having MinGW or MSYS installed (as opposed to Cygwin). If you do not want to use MSYS, replace the -G "MSYS Makefiles" in any calls to cmake with -G "MinGW Makefiles" (AFAIK; see cmake --help for the list of generators).
• All libraries are installed under ~/tsc-build to keep the MinGW/MSYS directories free from them. Boost is installed into ~/tsc-build/boost.
• ~ is your MSYS home directory, not your Windows profile dir. It usually is C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\yourusername.

For the next time, I will restrict my Windows TSC experience to crosscompiling TSC, which works just fine.

Valete,
Quintus

[datahead8888]

Probably you are right. Nevertheless, I would like to post my progress.

I just figured you were doing it for us. I don't want to otherwise discourage you. The release, though, is the top priority for giving something to everyone. Thanks for looking into this.

The reason I'm interested in Visual Studio is because of my familiarity with the IDE and because I really like the debugging system. I would be interested in eventually trying MinGW out, especially after @dlpenguinlover told me good things about it.

[datahead8888]

I have successfully built ALL of TSC’s dependencies with MinGW.

@Quintus, what was your reasoning for doing it all through MinGW/MSYS rather than using Windows binaries of the libraries? Is it to avoid the trouble of going to 10,000 some websites and downloading Windows compilations of every open source library or just because that's what MinGW requires?

@Quintus / @dlpenguinlover - What might be the most feasible way to obtain all libraries without building them all? This would be an approach for Visual Studio/Eclipse and I assume any other compiler on Windows that uses dll/lib files or something such as this. chocolatey might be an option for more quickly obtaining some libraries (akin to apt-get); others would have to be downloaded (or possibly still built from source in some cases) from websites.

I have to do most of my schoolwork from Windows, so in reality I probably would find it easier to pop in for a little bit and look at TSC code if I were able to build it from Windows (though I can't promise :) )