[Coin-discuss] Native Windows build

[Ted Ralphs]

Marco,

Thanks for pointing this out. We have recently discovered the same
solution and are in the process of modifying the current build system,
so that it will work "out of the box" with MinGW. In fact, it should
even be possible to build COIN using the the MinGW "make" utility with
the native Microsoft compiler, available as part of the free Microsoft
Visual C++ Toolkit (for those who don't have the Visual C++ IDE). Using
MinGW in combination with the open source Eclipse IDE provides a Windows
development environment roughly like Visual C++. Also in the works is a
binary distribution, so stay tuned for that.

By the way, it's not that clear on the MinGW Web site, but there is a
single GUI installer you can download that will install all of the
required tools automatically:

http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-5.0.2.exe?download

If you also install MSys, a lightweight bash shell environment, you will
be able to use standard Unix commands on the Windows command line.

Cheers,

Ted

marco tacconi wrote:
> Dear COIN-OR team/users,
> first of all sorry for my english...
> 
> I found an easy way to build the COIN-OR framework on Windows XP without using
> Visual C++ nor CYGWIN.
> We need only MinGW, UnxUtils and a NTFS filesystem.
> Tested on Windows XP SP2.
> 
> Steps:
> 
> 1) Download the following packages:
> 1a) MinGW core from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/gcc-core-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz?download 
> 1b) MinGW g++ from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/gcc-g++-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz?download
> 1c) MinGW runtime from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/mingw-runtime-3.9.tar.gz?download
> 1d) MinGW win32api (not sure if is needed) from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/w32api-3.6.tar.gz?download
> 1e) MinGW binutils from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/binutils-2.15.91-20040904-1.tar.gz?download
> 1f) MinGW make from http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/mingw32-make-3.80.0-3.tar.gz?download
> Extract all packages in a directory, e.g. C:\MinGW
> Copy C:\MinGW\bin\mingw32-make.exe to C:\MinGW\bin\make.exe
> Add C:\MinGW\bin to the PATH environment variable
> 
> 2) Download the following packages:
> 2a) UnxUtils from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/UnxUtils.zip
> 2b) UnxUpdates from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/UnxUpdates.zip
> Extract UnxUtils in a directory, e.g. C:\UnxUtils
> Extract UnxUpdates in C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin overwriting existing files
> Copy C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\zsh.exe to C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\sh.exe
> Add C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin to the PATH environment variable
> 
> 3) Now we need the COIN-OR framework, download http://www.coin-or.org/Tarballs/COIN_2006Mar23.tgz
> Extract the package in a directory without spaces on a NTFS filesystem, e.g. C:\
> 
> 4) Edit C:\COIN\Makefiles\Makefile.location adjusting the CoinDir variable, e.g. CoinDir ?= C:/COIN
> 
> 5) Copy C:\COIN\Makefiles\Makefile.CYGWIN to C:\COIN\Makefiles\Makefile.WindowsNT
> Optionally edit this file and change the line $(warning "Shared libs are not (yet!) supported on CYGWIN") to $(warning "Shared libs are not (yet!) supported on WindowsNT")
> 
> 6) Now we are ready to compile COIN-OR modules.
> Open the command prompt and enter in the directory of the COIN-OR module of interest, e.g. cd C:\COIN\Clp
> Optionally edit the makefile of the module, e.g. C:\COIN\Clp\Makefile.Clp adjusting the variables LibType and OptLevel
> Launch make.exe this will build the module and relative dependencies.
> 
> Compiled modules will be copied in C:\COIN\lib and in C:\COIN\include will be copied the header files.
> 
> Know issue:
> The command make unittest in C:\COIN\Clp fail because it try to execute "cp -a WindowsNT-g/clp .." instead of "cp -a WindowsNT-g/clp.exe .."
> 
> I think that these instructions can be useful for other people, so I would be happy if, after a period of test and corrections, them enter in the official COIN-OR documentation.
> 
> Regards.
> 
> Marco Tacconi
> 
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> Coin-discuss at list.coin-or.org
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-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Assistant Professor
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Lehigh University
(610)758-4784
tkralphs at lehigh.edu
www.lehigh.edu/~tkr2