Windows port ------------ This directory contains the files required to build this software on the native Windows platform. As a rule of thumb, the root of this directory contains files needed to build the library using the command-line tools, while various subdirectories contain project files for various IDEs. 1. Building from the command-line ================================= This is the easiest, preferred and currently supported method. In order to build from the command-line you need to make sure that your compiler works from the command line. This is not always the case, often the required environment variables are missing. If you are not sure, test if this works first. If it doesn't, you will first have to configure your compiler suite to run from the command-line - please refer to your compiler's documentation regarding that. The first thing you want to do is configure the source. You can have the configuration script do this automatically for you. The configuration script is written in JScript, a Microsoft's implementation of the ECMA scripting language. Almost every Windows machine can execute this through the Windows Scripting Host. If your system lacks the ability to execute JScript for some reason, you must perform the configuration manually. The second step is compiling the source and, optionally, installing it to the location of your choosing. 1.1 Configuring the source automatically ---------------------------------------- The configuration script accepts numerous options. Some of these affect features which will be available in the compiled software, others affect the way the software is built and installed. To see a full list of options supported by the configuration script, run cscript configure.js help from the win32 subdirectory. The configuration script will present you the options it accepts and give a biref explanation of these. In every case you will have two sets of options. The first set is specific to the software you are building and the second one is specific to the Windows port. Once you have decided which options suit you, run the script with that options. Here is an example: cscript configure.js prefix=c:\opt include=c:\opt\include lib=c:\opt\lib debug=yes The previous example will configure the process to install the library in c:\opt, use c:\opt\include and c:\opt\lib as additional search paths for the compiler and the linker and build executables with debug symbols. Note: Please do not use path names which contain spaces. This will fail. Allowing this would require me to put almost everything in the Makefile in quotas and that looks quite ugly with my syntax-highlighting engine. If you absolutely must use spaces in paths send me an email and tell me why. If there are enough of you out there who need this, or if a single one has a very good reason, I will modify the Makefile to allow spaces in paths. 1.2 (Not) Configuring the source manually ----------------------------------------- The manual configuration is pretty straightforward, but I would suggest rather to get a JScript engine and let the configure script do it for you. This process involves editing the apropriate Makefile to suit your needs, as well as manually generating certain *.h files from their *.h.in sources. If you really have no idea what I am talking about and ask yourself what in Gods name do I mean with '*.h files and their *.h.in sources', then you really should do an automatic configuration. Which files must be generated and what needs to be done with their sources in order to generate them is something people who have built this software before already know. You will not find any explanations for that here. Please configure the source manually only if you already know what you must do. Otherwise, you have the choice of either getting a precompiled binary distribution, or performing the automatic configuration. 1.3 Compiling ------------- After the configuration stage has been completed, you want to build the software. You will have to use the make tool which comes with your compiler. If you, for example, configured the source to build with Microsoft's MSVC compiler, you would use the NMAKE utility. If you configured it to build with GNU C compiler, mingw edition, you would use the GNU make. Assuming you use MSVC, type nmake in the win32 subdirectory.When the building completes, you will find the executable files in win32\binaries directory. You can install the software into the directory you specified to the configure script during the configure stage by typing nmake install That would be it, enjoy. 2. Building with the IDE ======================== Each supported IDE has its project files placed in a subdirectory of win32. If you use a particular IDE, you should be able to instinctively recognise its project files. When you have found your favourites, load them into the IDE and do whatever you would do with any other project files. If you are a novice and puzzled about how to use particular project files with a particular IDE, check for a readme file in that IDEs subdirectory. I won't discuss any particular IDE here, because I would like to keep this document as general as possible, and there is also a chance that support exists for IDEs which I have never seen. November 2002, Igor Zlatkovic