General ======= For more information about the port or GLib, GTk+ and the GIMP to native Windows, and pre-built binary packages, see http://www.iki.fi/tml/gimp/win32/ . "Native" means that we use the Win32 API only, and not any POSIX emulation layer except that provided by the Microsoft runtime C library. Additionally, a pthreads emulation library is used. To build GLib on Win32, you can use either the Microsoft compiler and tools, or gcc. Both the compiler from MSVC 5.0 and from MSVC 6.0 have been used successfully. With gcc I mean gcc-2.95 as distributed by Mumit Khan, running under cygwin-b20.1. 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 sometimes called "mingw32". To test the GLib functions, go to the tests subdirectory and enter `nmake -f makefile.msc check` or `make -f makefile.cygwin check`. If you would want to use the cygwin tools to generate executables that *do* use the cygwin runtime, the normal Unix configuration method should work as if on Unix. But it won't produce DLLs. At least I haven't succeeded in that. With a little work, it might be possible to use the ./configure mechanism also with a "mingw32" configuration. The following preprocessor macros are defined in glibconfig.h and used for conditional compilation related to Win32: - WIN32 is defined when compiling for the Win32 platform, regardless if using the X11 or Win32 windowing API (in the case of GLib, this dimension isn't significant), regardless whether using a more or less complete POSIX emulation runtime layer (like Cygwin) or not. - NATIVE_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. The Win32 port uses the combination with both of those on. As these are in glibconfig.h, they are available to all source files that use GLib (or GTk+, which uses GLib). Additionally, there are the compiler-specific macros: - _MSC_VER is defined when using the Microsoft compiler - __GNUC__ is defined when using GCC Some of the usage of these macros used to be a bit mixed up, and had to be straightened out when adding the gcc support. In particular, I used to check for _MSC_VER in some places where I really wanted to check for the Microsoft C library, and those checks has now been changed to NATIVE_WIN32. NATIVE_WIN32 ought to be renamed to USE_MSVCRT. Pthreads library ================ 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.cygwin. The pthreads distribution includes the precompiled dll and import libraries both for MSVC and gcc. 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. Where are the makefiles? ======================== If you are building from a CVS snapshot, you will not have any makefile.msc or makefile.cygwin file. You should copy the corresponding makefile.msc.in or makefile.cygwin.in file to that name, and edit the line that sets GLIB_VER to the correct version number. This is done automatically when an official distribution package is built. Building with MSVC ================== If using the Microsoft toolchain, build with `nmake -f makefile.msc`. Install with `nmake -f makefile.msc install`. Building with gcc ================= The gcc support was added quite recently, but seems to work. Debugging with gdb works. I use the latest and greatest gcc and mingw32. Somewhat earlier versions will also work, but you are on your own. Read and understand these instruction carefully. If you don't understand or can't follow the instructions, you probably shouldn't want to build glib (or gtk or gimp) yourself anyway. Fetch gcc-2.95 built for cygwin from ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/cygwin/gcc-2.95/gcc-2.95-cygb20.tar.gz Install it somewhere, for instance "C:\gcc-2.95" (/gcc-2.95 as seen from cygwin). We call this directory $GCCDIR below. You will have subdirectories "H-i586-cygwin32" and "include" under $GCCDIR. Next, you need to modify the gcc setup to use the msvcrt runtime instead of crtdll. Also, the mingw32 and win32 API headers and import libraries need to be added. I have collected all the necessary additions in the file http://www.iki.fi/tml/gimp/win32/gcc-2.95-additions.zip . Install that in $GCCDIR. If you really want to do everything by yourself, follow the instructions in http://www.iki.fi/tml/gimp/win32/gcc-environment-setup.html Next, go back to the GLib directory and build using `make -f makefile.cygwin`. Building the dlls uses the script build-dll which is somewhat of a hack. But I couldn't get things working in a cleaner way. --Tor Lillqvist