Setting up a MinGW-w64 build environment

This page documents our recommended software build environment for Windows, tested on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. The build environment is capable of building both 64-bit and 32-bit software, although some manual editing of configuration files is required to switch between the two. We will be evolving these recommendations over time, so check back again to see more. With some fairly obvious changes, these instructions will also work for Windows XP 32-bit, but you can't (easily) build 64-bit Python extensions on that platform.

The suggested build environment includes

• 7-zip file archive tool
• Python 2.7.5 scripting language
• GCC 4.x compiler suite
• SCons 2.3.0 software build tool
• gedit 2.30.1 text editor
• SWIG 2.0.10 wrapper interface generator
• NSIS installation package builder
• Dependency Walker 2.2 library/program file dependency checker
• Subversion 1.8.0 version control software

These steps were completed by a user with adminstrator privileges. It is knows the Python, MinGW etc can be installed by non-adminstrator users, but we haven't yet tested that scenario, unfortunately.

First steps

• Download and install the 64-bit version of 7-zip. We used the 64-bit version, 7z920-x64.msi.
• Download and install the latest Python 2.7 release. We used the 64-bit version if 2.7.5, python-2.7.5.amd64.msi from this page. If you want to build Python extensions, as we do with ASCEND, then you need to use the 64-bit version of Python with the 64-bit C/C++ compiler, or the 32-bit version of Python with the 32-bit C/C++ compiler. If you install the 32-bit version of Python, we suggest you select the installation directory as c:\Python27_32, whereas for the 64-bit version, use the default c:\Python27.
• Download and install the gedit text editor for Windows. We used this package: gedit-setup-2.30.1-1.exe (32-bit)
• Download and install NSIS. We used nsis-2.46-setup.exe. You can tell the installer not to run NSIS, no need for that.

MinGW-w64

MinGW-w64 (Minimalist GNU for Windows, 64-bit) is a version of the earlier MinGW version of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection: C, C++ and Fortran compilers and associated tools) that was carefully extended to include support for 64-bit Windows. It works with both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, but you need to make sure you download the right package according to which platform you want to target (and which platform you are building on, too). We're aiming for the following file structure:

c:
  \mingw
        \64
        \32
        \msys

Download x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc-4.8.0-win64_rubenvb.7z, which provides you with the 64-bit MinGW-w64 GCC compiler targeting 64-bit Windows. Once you have the downloaded file, right-click it, select "7-zip" and "Open archive". Double click 'mingw64', then select all of the sub-files and subfolders under there (bin, lib, include, and the rest). Click "Extract" and type in c:\mingw\64. Then check in Windows Explorer that the files have appeared as expected. You should have c:\mingw\64\bin, c:\mingw\64\lib, and so on.

Optional. If you also want to be able to build 32-bit stuff, download i686-w64-mingw32-gcc-4.8.0-win32_rubenvb.7z and extract the contents, using the same method above, into c:\mingw\32. This is the compiler for making 32-bit packages, and it only requires 32-bit Windows to run, so all of the above should work fine even on native 32-bit Windows XP, for example (but for 32-bit windows, you need to also select 32-bit Python and 7-zip above).

MSYS

MSYS provides a command-line interface to MinGW that looks and feels like Linux/Unix terminal and the Mac OSX terminal. It includes a large number of very useful utilities like 'wget', 'grep', and many others which will be useful when building software with GCC.

• Download MSYS-20111123.zip and extract the contents into c:\mingw\msys. This can be done by locating the downloaded MSYS-20111123.zip file, double-clicking it, then when you see the folder 'msys', copy it and paste it into the directory c:\mingw (navigate into c:\ then mingw then paste).

• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\mingw\msys\postinstall and run the batch-file pi (aka pi.bat). This will pop up a console with some questions in it. You need to say that you have installed MinGW and that its location is c:/mingw/64. The script should complete with a few minor messages.

• Open gedit (from the Start menu) and check the contents of the file c:\mingw\msys\etc\fstab (no filename extension). It should contain simply the text as shown here:

c:/mingw/64   /mingw

• In Windows Explorer, navigate to c:\mingw\msys and create a shortcut to the batch-file msys.bat. Right-click the resulting shortcut and select to change its icon to c:\mingw\msys\msys.ico. Move the resulting shortcut to your desktop.

• Test that MSYS is working correctly:

• In gedit, open the file c:\mingw\msys\home\yourusername\.profile (no file extension). In that file, enter the following text, and save the resulting file.

export PATH=/c/Python27:/c/Python27/Scripts:$PATH
alias gedit="/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/gedit/bin/gedit"

SCons

• Download the latest stable SCons tarball file. We used http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/scons/scons-2.3.0.tar.gz scons-2.3.0.tar.gz]. Move the saved file to the directory c:\mingw\msys\home\yourusername.
• Unpack, build and install SCons using the following commands, typed into a new MSYS window.

tar zxvf scons-2.3.0.tar.gz
python setup.py bdist_wininst
start dist/scons-2.3.0-win-amd64.exe 

• Step through the installer process, then return to your MSYS window and type

copy /c/Python27/Scripts/scons.py /c/Python27/Scripts/scons

• Test that SCons is working by typing scons --version. You should get a copyright message including text to show that the you have version 2.3.0 of SCons running.

Dependency Walker

• Download the 'x64' version of Dependency Walker. We downloaded this file: depends22_x64.zip. If you are also building 32-bit applications, you will also need the i686 version of Dependency Walker.
• Unpack the .exe and .dll files into the directory c:\mingw\64\bin, for the 64-bit version and/or c:\mingw\32\bin for the 32-bit version.
• Test that it's working by typing into MSYS the command depends /mingw/bin/gcc.exe. A window should pop up showing the DLLs that your GCC compiler depends on.

SWIG

• Download a pre-compiled 'swigwin' copy of SWIG. We used swigwin-2.0.10.zip. As SWIG is a code pre-processor, it doesn't matter whether it's 32-bit or 64-bit, they will be perfectly equivalent.
• Create a folder c:\mingw\msys\opt using Windows Explorer, then copy the 'swigwin-2.0.10' folder out of the Zip archive and into the new location c:\mingw\msys\opt\swigwin-2.0.10
• In MSYS, type gedit ~/.profile, then add the SWIG directory to your PATH in your profile, so that it reads:

export PATH=/c/Python27:/c/Python27/Scripts:$PATH
alias gedit="/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/gedit/bin/gedit"
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/swigwin-2.0.10

• Close your MSYS window and reopen it, so that the ~/.profile will be re-read. Then test SWIG by typing swig -version. You should see the version number and some other information output.

GTK+2

GTK+ is useful for developing cross-platform graphical user interface (GUI) programs. It works well under Windows, and it is the native GUI toolkit for Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and other Linux distributions. It has also been ported to Mac, although getting up and running on that platform is still a bit difficult. The ASCEND project provides some pre-compiled GTK+ installers that make getting started with GTK+ very straightforward.

• Download gtk+-2.22.1-20101229-x64-a4.exe from the ASCEND 'files' section, under 'thirdparty'.
• Again edit your ~/.profile file, this time add GTK, but at the end of your PATH:

export PATH=/c/Python27:/c/Python27/Scripts:$PATH:/c/Program\ Files/GTK+-2.22/bin
alias gedit="/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/gedit/bin/gedit"
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/swigwin-2.0.10

• Close your MSYS and re-open it so that the updated ~/.profile is loaded.
• Check that GTK is working by typing either pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --libs or gtk-demo.

Subversion

Subversion is a version control software. ASCEND uses it for hosting our source code, as do many other projects, especially on SourceForge.net and Google Code.

• Download and install the 64-bit version of SlikSVN, Slik-Subversion-1.8.0-x64.msi from the SlikSVN website. You can use the 'typical' settings and default installation location, which is c:\Program Files\SlikSvn
• Edit your ~/.profile, adding the final line so that you have

export PATH=/c/Python27:/c/Python27/Scripts:$PATH:/c/Program\ Files/GTK+-2.22/bin
alias gedit="/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/gedit/bin/gedit"
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/swigwin-2.0.10
export PATH=$PATH:/c/Program\ Files/SlikSvn/bin

• Close your MSYS and re-open it so that the updated ~/.profile is loaded.
• Check that subversion is working by typing svn --version.

Usage tips

All done! You may wish to make a backup of your directory c:\mingw, which contains your complete MSYS and MinGW setup, for easy reinstallation later.

When building software on this platform using GNU AutoTools, (ie, the typical './configure && make && make install' instructions), you should specify

./configure --prefix=/mingw
make 
make install

This will have the result that libraries and new tools will be installed into c:\mingw\64.

If you ever want to switch building 32-bit code, you simply edit c:\mingw\msys\etc\fstab and change c:/mingw/64 /mingw to c:/mingw/32. Obviously you must install the MinGW-w64 32-bit compiler into that other location in that case. You also need to edit your ~/.profile to point to the alternative Python location, so that you can link against 64-bit Python in any packages you are going to build (also so that SCons scripts correctly determine your 64-bit target architecture).