General
=======
-For more information about the port or GLib, GTk+ and the GIMP to
-native Windows, and pre-built binaries (DLLs), surf to
-http://www.gimp.org/win32/ . "Native" means that we use the Win32 API
-only, and no POSIX (Unix) emulation layer except that provided by the
-Microsoft runtime C library, and a pthreads emulation library.
+For prebuilt binaries (DLLs and EXEs) and developer packages (headers,
+import libraries) of GLib, GTK+, GIMP etc for Windows, surf to
+http://www.gimp.org/win32/ . They are for "native" Windows meaning
+they use the Win32 API and Microsoft C runtime library only, no POSIX
+(Unix) emulation layer (like Cygwin).
To build GLib on Win32, you can use either gcc or the Microsoft
compiler and tools. Both the compiler from MSVC 5.0 and from MSVC 6.0
have been used successfully.
But note that to just *use* GLib on Windows, there is no need to build
-it, prebuilt DLLs are available from the webiste above.
-
-With gcc I mean gcc-2.95.2 as distributed by Mumit Khan, either as a
-mingw version (preferred), or running under cygwin. To successfully
-use gcc, follow the instructions below. We want to use gcc
--mno-cygwin, i.e. produce executables (.exe and .dll files) that do
-*not* require the cygwin runtime library. This is called "mingw". I
-also use the -fnative-struct flag, which means that in order to use
-the prebuilt DLLs (especially of GTK+), you *must* also use that flag.
-(This flag means that the struct layout is identical to that used by
-MSVC.)
-
-If you would want to use the cygwin tools to generate a GLib that
-*does* use the cygwin runtime, the normal Unix configuration method
-should work as if on Unix. Note that successfully producing shared
-libraries (DLLs) most probably requires you to have a very new libtool
-(from March 2001), and to replace the libtool.m4 included in
-acinclude.m4 with the new one, and to replace ltmain.sh.
-
-It is also possible to use the ./configure mechanism when building for
-a mingw configuration. You should be running cygwin for the configure
-script to work, obviously. The same libtool issue has to be taken into
-account as when building for Cygwin: You most probably should have a
-libtool from March 2001 or so, and replace libtool.m4 (in
-acinclude.m4) and ltmain.sh.
+it yourself. Prepackaged runtime and developer packages are available
+from the webiste above. On Unix, it is quite normal that system admins
+build and install libraries like GLib themselves. But on Windows
+setting up a correct build environment can be quite a task, especially
+if you are used to on Unix just type ./configure; make, and expect
+things to work as smoothly on Windows.
-The following preprocessor macros are used for conditional compilation
-related to Win32:
+The following preprocessor macros can be used for conditional
+compilation related to Win32 in GLib-using code:
-- G_OS_WIN32 is defined when compiling for Win32, *and* without
- any POSIX emulation, other that to the extent provided by the
- bundled Microsoft C library (msvcrt.dll) and the pthreads-win32
- library. For instance, pathnames are in the native Windows syntax.
+- G_OS_WIN32 is defined when compiling for native Win32, without
+ any POSIX emulation, other than to the extent provided by the
+ bundled Microsoft C library (msvcrt.dll).
- G_WITH_CYGWIN is defined if compiling for the Cygwin
environment. Note that G_OS_WIN32 is *not* defined in that case, as
- G_PLATFORM_WIN32 is defined when either G_OS_WIN32 or G_WITH_CYGWIN
is defined.
-The Win32 port of GLib and related software uses only G_OS_WIN32. As
-G_OS_WIN32 is defined in glibconfig.h, it is available to all source
-files that use GLib (or GTk+, which uses GLib).
+These macros are defined in glibconfig.h, and are thus (indirectly)
+available in all source files that include <glib.h> or GTK+ headers.
Additionally, there are the compiler-specific macros:
-- __GNUC__ is defined when using GCC
+- __GNUC__ is defined when using gcc
- _MSC_VER is defined when using the Microsoft compiler
-G_OS_WIN32 implies using the Microsoft C runtime MSVCRT.DLL. GLib or
-software using it is not known to work with the older CRTDLL.DLL
-runtime.
+G_OS_WIN32 implies using the Microsoft C runtime MSVCRT.DLL. GLib is
+not known to work with the older CRTDLL.DLL runtime, or the static
+Microsoft C runtime libraries LIBC.LIB and LIBCMT.LIB. It apparently
+does work with the debugging version of MSVCRT.DLL, MSVCRTD.DLL.
-Building software that use GLib or GTk+
+Building software that use GLib or GTK+
=======================================
-Even building software that just *use* GLib or GTk+ also require to
+Even building software that just *uses* GLib or GTK+ also require to
have the right compiler set up the right way, so if you intend to use
gcc, follow the relevant instructions below in that case, too.
-Pthreads library
-================
+I use gcc with the -fnative-struct flag, which means that in order to
+use the prebuilt DLLs (especially of GTK+), you *must* also use that
+flag. (This flag means that the struct layout rules are identical to
+those used by MSVC. This is essential if the same DLLs are to be
+usable both from gcc- and MSVC-compiled code. This definitely is
+something one wants.)
-Before building you must get the pthreads library for Win32 from
-http://sourceware.cygnus.com/pthreads-win32/. The pthreads-win32
-snapshot from 1999-05-30 is the one that should be used. Edit the
-location of the pthreads library and include files in makefile.msc or
-makefile.mingw. The pthreads distribution includes the precompiled dll
-and import libraries both for MSVC and gcc. Later versions might also
-work.
+Building GLib
+=============
-The pthreads for Win32 package that the thread support uses supposedly
-isn't quite ready yet, and thus threads stuff should not be relied
-upon for anything serious.
-
-Libiconv
-========
+Again, first decide whether you really want to do this.
Before building GLib you must also have the libiconv library, either
from the same website mentioned above, or from it's homepage at
-http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/packages-libiconv.html.
+http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/packages-libiconv.html. Libiconv has
+makefiles for building with MS Visual C only, but as it is one source
+file only, building it "by hand" with gcc isn't hard.
+
+You must also have the "intl" library from GNU tettext 0.10.40 (or
+later). Get a prebuilt version from the website mentioned above.
+
+Edit the correct paths to those libraries in build/win32/module.defs
+as appropriate.
Where are the makefiles?
========================
If you are building from a CVS snapshot, you will not have any
-makefile.mingw or makefile.msc file. You should copy the corresponding
-makefile.mingw.in or makefile.msc.in file to that name, and edit the
-line that sets GLIB_VER to the correct version number.
+makefile.mingw or makefile.msc files. You should copy the
+corresponding makefile.mingw.in or makefile.msc.in file to that name,
+and replace any @...@ strings with the correct value.
This is done automatically when an official GLib source distribution
-package is built.
+package is built, so if you get GLib from a source distribution
+package, there should be makefile.mingw and makefile.msc files ready
+to use (after some editing).
Building GLib with gcc
======================
-I use the latest gcc, gcc-2.95.2. Version 2.95 will most probably also
-work.
-
-You can either use gcc running on cygwin, or the "pure" mingw
-gcc. Using the latter is much easier.
+I use gcc-2.95.3. Version 2.95.2 will most probably also work.
-Just fetch the latest version of gcc for mingw and the msvcrt runtime,
-currently from
-ftp://ftp.nanotech.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/snapshots/gcc-2.95.2-1/
-.
+You can either use gcc running on Cygwin, or the "pure" mingw
+gcc. Using the latter might work better, or at least did at some
+point.
-Download the three zip archives: the gcc-<version>-msvcrt,
-mingw-msvcrt-<timestamp> and binutils-<timestamp>-msvcrt, and unpack
-them in a suitable directory.
+Fetch the latest version of gcc for mingw and the msvcrt runtime, from
+www.mingw.org.
Set up your PATH so that the gcc from the bin directory that got
-created above is the one that gets used. You can skip steps 1--5
-below. Even if you run the mingw gcc, you still want to have cygwin to
-run make in.
-
-If you want to run a cygwin-based gcc, it gets a bit more
-complicated. We still want gcc to produce code that does not use
-cygwin, but the msvcrt runtime. The way to do this can be quite
-complex, and the instructions are not included here. Contact me if you
-want some possibly outdated, misleading and incomplete advice.
+created above is the one that gets used. Even if you run the mingw
+gcc, you still want to have Cygwin to run make in.
+
+Then run make -f makefile.mingw. Install the resulting DLLs somewhere
+in your PATH. You can either keep the headers and import libraries
+where they are, or install them somewhere else. There are no rules in
+the makefile.mingws for installing, it is up to you where to put them.
+
+Autoconfiscated build
+=====================
+
+It is also possible to use the auto*, ./configure and libtool
+mechanism when building with gcc. You should be running Cygwin, or
+maybe cross-compiling from real Unix, for the configure script to
+work, obviously. (It might also be possible to use "MSYS", but I
+haven't checked.) You most probably should have very new auto* and
+libtool. Personally, I invoke configure using:
+
+CC='gcc -mpentium -fnative-struct'
+ CPPFLAGS='-I/src/libiconv-1.7/include -I/target/include'
+ LDFLAGS='-L/src/libiconv-1.7/lib -L/target/lib' ./configure
+ --with-libiconv --disable-static --prefix=/target
+ --host=i386-pc-mingw32 --enable-maintainer-mode
+
+(on a single line)
+
+But please note that the ./configure mechanism should not blindly be
+used to build a GLib to be distributed to other developers because it
+produces a compiler-dependent glibconfig.h (and config.h, but that
+shouldn't matter, as it isn't seen by GLib-using applications). For
+instance, the typedef for gint64 is long long with gcc, but __int64
+with MSVC.
+
+Except for this and a few other minor issues, there really shouldn't
+be any reason to distribute separate GLib headers and DLLs for gcc and
+MSVC users, as both compilers generate code that uses the same C
+runtime library. Thus one either has to manually edit glibconfig.h
+afterwards, or use the supplied config.h.win32 and
+glibconfig.h.win32. These have been produced by running configure
+twice, once using gcc and once using MSVC, and merging the resulting
+files with diff -D.
+
+There might be other hickups when using auto* and configure to build
+with gcc. Lately I have used auto*/configure/libtool exclusively when
+building GLib, GTK+, GIMP etc on Win32, and it seems to work well
+(with some patches applied to the current CVS libtool...).
+
+The hand-written makefile.{mingw,msc} files, and the stuff in the
+"build" subdirectory, produce DLLs and import libraries that match
+what Makefile.am and libtool produces. For GLib, the DLL is called
+libglib-1.3-15.dll (at GLib 1.3.15), and the import libraries
+libglib-1.3.dll.a and glib-1.3.lib. Note that the "1.3" is part of the
+"basename" of the library, it is not something that libtool have
+tucked on. The -15 suffix is the value of "LT_CURRENT - LT_AGE". The
+15 is *not* simply the micro version number of GLib, although, for
+GLib 1.3.15, it happens to be the same. For the gory details, see
+configure.in and libtool documentation.
+
+If you want to run the Cygwin-hosted gcc, and still want to produce
+code that does not use Cygwin, but the msvcrt runtime, in theory it
+should work to use the -no-cygwin flag, but I haven't tested that
+lately.
+
+If you would want to use the Cygwin tools to generate a GLib that
+*does* use the Cygwin runtime, the normal Unix configuration method
+should work as if on Unix. Note that successfully producing shared
+libraries (DLLs) for Cygwin most probably requires you to have a very
+new libtool. (And a new libtool probably requires rather new autoconf
+and automake.) I haven't personally tested this in a while.
Building with MSVC
==================
If using the Microsoft toolchain, build with `nmake -f
-makefile.msc`. Install with `nmake -f makefile.msc install`.
+makefile.msc`.
--Tor Lillqvist <tml@iki.fi>
projects / platform / upstream / glib.git / blobdiff