[Coin-discuss] Alternate build strategy for Visual Studio

[Stuart Mitchell]

Ok this may be naive as well
but in the linux build all the libraries and headers get copied into lib
and include directories.

If I'm reading this right in the new build system in windows the
libraries will go to one place  
%COIN_ROOT%\{Win32,x64}\{Debug,Release}\{bin,lib}

can the header files be copied somewhere too.

this will make it easier to link python code to coin in a windows
environment as I won't have to manually specify the location of each
header file.

Stu

On Thu, 2010-09-16 at 14:18 +1200, Lou Hafer wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> 	I've put together a new strategy for building Coin with MS Visual
> Studio. The result is committed in trunk in MSVisualStudio/v9alt. The basic
> concept matches the current direction in Coin unix builds: Move away from a
> monolithic package checkout towards individual project checkouts that are
> stitched together for use. As an additional benefit, you get four
> configurations, (64, 32 bit) X (debug, release); useful for developers.
> Projects are stitched together with a cascade of .vsprops files. All results
> (.lib and .exe) are stashed in a common location (sorted by configuration).
> 
> 	The rest of this post is an explanation of how to use it. If you don't
> build with Visual Studio, you can quit reading now.
> 
> 	So far, BuildTools, CoinUtils, Osi, Clp (with OsiClp), DyLP (with
> OsiDyLP), Cgl, and Cbc have the new solution and project files. To use them,
> proceed as follows:
> 
>   1) Check out the projects above, *without externals* (and be careful
>      with updates, it's easy to let the externals creep back in).
> 
>   2) The directory where you checked out all these packages is COIN_ROOT.
>      Define COIN_ROOT in your environment. Also define COIN_ROOT_ESCAPED,
>      which will be used to get things like D:\Coin\Split into code via
>      compile-time defines.
> 
> For example, my setup looks like this:
>    D:\Coin\Split\BuildTools
> 		\Cbc
> 		\Cgl
> 		\Clp
> 		\CoinUtils
> 		\DyLP
> 		\Osi
> 
>   COIN_ROOT is D:\Coin\Split
>   COIN_ROOT_ESCAPED is D:\\Coin\\Split
> 
>   3) Go to ....\MSVisualStudio\v9alt and build each solution, in the order
>      Coinutils, Osi, Clp, DyLP, Cgl, Cbc. (Skip BuildTools, it's just data
>      files.) There's probably a good way to script this, but my Windows isn't
>      that good yet. The `Batch Build' entry in the VS Build menu is the
>      efficient way to build however many configurations you want.
> 
> Results are sorted as follows:
> 
>   %COIN_ROOT%\{Win32,x64}\{Debug,Release}\{bin,lib}
> 
> The solution and project files use macros to find the right places. Most of
> this is defined in the .vsprops files. At first glance, you'll see little when
> you look at property pages, but check the inherited values.
> 
> 	I look at this as an experiment, and I'll be working on it over the
> next few months, alternating with vacations on unix  :-). Feedback from people
> who have real experience developing with VS would be much appreciated.
> Contributions even more so. I expect this effort looks painfully naive to an
> experienced VS user.
> 
> 	OsiCbc isn't there yet (sorry, Matt G.  :-). It's on my list for next
> week. I'm having trouble seeing how to fit DLLs into this. A DLL is located
> using Path (like an executable), but the .lib wrapper that's used to do
> implicit linking of a DLL is (presumably) located like a regular library. I
> need to figure out how to get the two products to different places (assuming
> that doesn't break some Microsoft assumption of how the world should work).
> There is the distinct possibility that things will break with the free download
> version of VS (in particular, 64-bit builds may be unavailable or fail).
> 
> 							Lou
> 
> 
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> http://list.coin-or.org/mailman/listinfo/coin-discuss


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Dr Stuart Mitchell
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University of Auckland
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