Visual Studio Build Support...

[datahead8888]

I'd be interested in getting TSC to build in Microsoft Visual Studio.

Aside from finding it useful myself, I think it might help bring some of the Windows programmers on board for the project. We would probably target the express edition of Visual Studio.

Users would use cmake to generate a Visual Studio .sln solution file. They could then build the application there.

This task may end up running pretty slowly, but I guess we'll see.

Note that this task is different than #224, which does not necessarily involve Visual Studio.
cc @dlpenguinlover

Also, how useful does this tool look for resolving dependencies along the way?
https://chocolatey.org/

[Quintus]

I leave this to those using MSVC and Windows. I can’t really be of much help here.

Vale,
Quintus

[datahead8888]

I started playing around with this. Currently I am blocked by a PkgConfig error.

Found rake: C:/Ruby22-x64/bin/rake
Found gperf: C:/Program Files (x86)/GnuWin32/bin/gperf.exe
CMake Error at C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:108 (message):
  Could NOT find PkgConfig (missing: PKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE)
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:315 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
  C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:102 (find_package_handle_standard_args)
  CMakeLists.txt:166 (find_package)


Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "C:/TSC/TSC/tsc/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".

This seems to be the main site:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/
--If necessary, I can start looking into a source build for pkg-config, but it will slow down this task a bit.

This discussion seems to talk about prebuilt binaries, but it sounds like it requires MinGW. Is this the best way to go (given I'm building in Visual Studio)?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1710922/how-to-install-pkg-config-in-windows

[Quintus]

pkg-config is such a small piece of software that you can just download and compile it yourself. To my knowledge it does not even have other dependencies than a C runtime. Just be sure to set the default search path compilation option for it to something where you actually place your libraries.

Vale,
Quintus

[Luiji]

@Quintus pkg-config depends on glib. For this reason many people install pkg-config-lite during bootstrapping functions. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pkgconfiglite

Personally I find it excessive for a tool like pkg-config to require glib when it does such a simple function.

[datahead8888]

Yes, I remember reading that it needs glib to compile. If pkg-config-lite lets me build TSC from source in Windows, I will just use that instead. Thanks, Luiji.

[Quintus]

Luiji Maryo notifications@github.com writes:

@Quintus pkg-config depends on glib. For this reason many people
install pkg-config-lite during bootstrapping
functions. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pkgconfiglite

Wat O_o. You are right. A tool so small like pkg-config should be
standalone and not have another dependency. I probably misread "glib" as
"glibc" in my package manager’s info, because I could hardly imagine
such a dependency on pkg-config.

Thanks for the link, I need to check it out.

Vale,
Quintus

[datahead8888]

pkgconfiglite worked quite well (and came with the binary). I'll post back if I get stumped again later. Thanks for the help.

[datahead8888]

@GeorgeRBR, do you think you might be willing to post the steps you followed if you get TSC compiling in Visual Studio? Visual Studio has a large user base, so this would help us recruit more programmers.

[georgeraraujo]

Sure, it's just that it's a lot of work because of the sheer number of required libraries.

[datahead8888]

@GeorgeRBR, Quintus has posted PKGBUILD's for the CEGUI and SDL_mixer libraries. I understand you should be able to use these to build these dependencies, possibly saving some work. You might find this helpful to get TSC building in Visual Studio. See #224.

[georgeraraujo]

Hi @datahead8888,
I had already managed to build all libraries.
The problem now is with the TSC executable. It compiles and links fine, but crashes on startup. I'll try and investigate further.