Does ice support MinGW?

[andreynech]

My previous patch was missing the install script and the rules file for MingW due to the fact I had forgot to add the -N option when diff'ing the trees. Here comes the proper patch. You do not need to apply both patches but only this one.

Thank you very much for the patch! I am using Ice with Qt in my project and to my knowledge MinGW is the only way to stay with non-commercial tools on windows (no free Qt for MSVC).

The patch was very helpful, however there were some problems while compiling ice and 3-rd party libraries. Here is (incomplete) list of problems.

1. Compilation failed because expat headers and libraries were not moved to the corresponding include and lib directories. I put them there manually.

2. Compiling openssl was real pain . Since windows does not support symlinks, unpacking available .tar.gz file creates headers with 0 size (supposed to be symlinks). I've made the script which copies headers to the place where symlinks are supposed to be created. Then to compile openssl the ms/mingw32.bat file should be copied to the openssl root directory and executed. I think that mingw32-fullbuild.sh is trying to do something different and that is why openssl were not compiled.

3. mc.exe compiler from MS Platform SDK were not found. I have MSVC8 installed which also include Platform SDK. However the path is different and need to be changed correspondently.

Anyway, after several hours I've manage to compile everything and quite happy now .

Thank you,
Andrey.

[pgquiles]

Thank you very much for the patch! I am using Ice with Qt in my project and to my knowledge MinGW is the only way to stay with non-commercial tools on windows (no free Qt for MSVC).

You are wrong about that. Since 4.3.2, you can use Qt on Windows with Visual C++ 2005 Express.

The patch was very helpful, however there were some problems while compiling ice and 3-rd party libraries. Here is (incomplete) list of problems.

1. Compilation failed because expat headers and libraries were not moved to the corresponding include and lib directories. I put them there manually.

No need for that. The mingw32-fullbuild.sh script downloads and builds expat for you and places all the headers and libraries in a work directory:

echo "Building Expat"; tar xvfz $EXPAT_PACKAGE; cd $EXPAT_DIR; ./configure; make; cp -f .libs/libexpat-1.dll $WORKDIR/lib/; cp -f .libs/libexpat.dll.a $WORKDIR/lib/expat.a; cp -f lib/expat.h lib/expat_external.h $WORKDIR/include

2. Compiling openssl was real pain . Since windows does not support symlinks, unpacking available .tar.gz file creates headers with 0 size (supposed to be symlinks). I've made the script which copies headers to the place where symlinks are supposed to be created. Then to compile openssl the ms/mingw32.bat file should be copied to the openssl root directory and executed. I think that mingw32-fullbuild.sh is trying to do something different and that is why openssl were not compiled.

Same thing here, the mingw32-fullbuild.sh patches and builds it for you.

3. mc.exe compiler from MS Platform SDK were not found. I have MSVC8 installed which also include Platform SDK. However the path is different and need to be changed correspondently.

You just need to set the WINDOWS_PLATFORM_SDK_DIR variable in the config/Make.rules.MINGW32 file. If you are using a Visual C++-provided SDK instead of the free Platform SDK, you should also set the MESSAGE_COMPILER variable in the same file.

Are you by any chance trying to do all this in a FAT32 filesystem? It worked flawlessly in a NTFS filesystem for me.

[andreynech]

You are wrong about that. Since 4.3.2, you can use Qt on Windows with Visual C++ 2005 Express.

On this page Qt/Windows Open Source Edition — Trolltech the following is mentioned: " Please note that the Open Source Edition of Qt will support the MinGW compiler. Visual Studio support and integration is provided with the commercial Editions of Qt.".
There is also only MinGW version and sources available for download. The version which is compiled with MSVC is 30-days trial. Please let me know if I overlooked something here.

No need for that. The mingw32-fullbuild.sh script downloads and builds expat for you and places all the headers and libraries in a work directory:

echo "Building Expat"; tar xvfz $EXPAT_PACKAGE; cd $EXPAT_DIR; ./configure; make; cp -f .libs/libexpat-1.dll $WORKDIR/lib/; cp -f .libs/libexpat.dll.a $WORKDIR/lib/expat.a; cp -f lib/expat.h lib/expat_external.h $WORKDIR/include

Same thing here, the mingw32-fullbuild.sh patches and builds it for you.

Well, maybe something went wrong by me. It was just my observations. Since there are chances that somebody else will also face similar problms, I decide to mention them here to provoke you for comments .

You just need to set the WINDOWS_PLATFORM_SDK_DIR variable in the config/Make.rules.MINGW32 file. If you are using a Visual C++-provided SDK instead of the free Platform SDK, you should also set the MESSAGE_COMPILER variable in the same file.

Right, this is how I solve it.

Are you by any chance trying to do all this in a FAT32 filesystem? It worked flawlessly in a NTFS filesystem for me.

No, it was XP with NTFS. Cygwin was able to create and show links properly, but somehow MinGW compiler did not recognize them correctly.

Thank you very much.
Andrey.

[pgquiles]

On this page Qt/Windows Open Source Edition — Trolltech the following is mentioned: " Please note that the Open Source Edition of Qt will support the MinGW compiler. Visual Studio support and integration is provided with the commercial Editions of Qt.".
There is also only MinGW version and sources available for download. The version which is compiled with MSVC is 30-days trial. Please let me know if I overlooked something here.

"We have decided to support Visual Studio Express with Qt/Windows Open Source - we are dual licensing the MSVC Makefile and project generator (Sorry, no VS Integration for Open Source users). Many thanks to our PM Eivind Thronsen for making this happen. So when will you get this? Well, if you had checked out the 4.3 snapshots, the generators have been available for about a week now. The mkspecs are on their way. We did schedule it for Qt 4.4 but some quick work by Marius and André will see this feature in Qt 4.3.2"

Trolltech Labs Blogs » Qt/Windows Open Source Edition to support VS Express

[DeepDiver]

Here you can find installation instructions for Qt with MSVC:
Qt 4.3: Installing Qt/Windows

Nevertheless:
This is the Ice forum!
Please visit: Qt Centre - The Ultimate Qt Community site - Home

You can find a lot of information on Qt!

CU There

[solikhin]

Thank you very much for the patch! I am using Ice with Qt in my project and to my knowledge MinGW is the only way to stay with non-commercial tools on windows (no free Qt for MSVC).

OOT, but it's posible to compile free QT open source with MSVC :
Qt4 with Visual Studio - qtnode

I've been using MSVC+ QT+ICE for 1.5 years. What a nice combination.

[sanjal]

Ladies and gentlemen:
has anyone successfully compiled Ice 3.3.0 on mingw (gcc 3.4.5)?

[recoder]

Hallo!

I recently compiled Ice 3.4.1 on Windows with the GNU 4.5.0 compiler. I used openssl-1.0.0a, syslog-win32-0.3 and the usual Ice dependencies. I did not have time to test the software, but I expect to find some time soon.

I compiled on windows XP Professional, in case anybody is interested and / or want to help, I can post patch(es), or when Zeroc is interested we can incorporate the changes (mostly adding defined(__MINGW32__) ) into the official tree.

Cheers,

Peter

[ponimas]

please, post your patches.
i'm interested in building ice for windows with mingw on my linux box.

[cnhome]

please share your patch

[recoder]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to dig little bit into it on weekend, but I forgot that it's May the first, anyway, at least here the first gnu-diff patch against a standard 4.3.1. It is for the TDM compiler (4.5.5), but since meanwhile the standard MinGW uses the new compiler as well, so it should work with standard MinGW as well; I will look at it ASAP.

You will need SSL, there is a small readme as well. I will soon provide better quality docs and patches, if You are in hurry You can start with this.

Pls. do not hesitate and contact me, I promise, I will react more prompt. And let me (us) know how far you got. I wanted originally to integrate Ice as a package into KDE for windows.

I needed to rename the .patch postfix into since .patch.txt because of some weird security settings of my company laptop (privately I'am poor Linux ;-) )

Have Fun , sorry for being late,

Cheers

Peter alias Recoder

[cnhome]

Nice! I will try in windows.

[recoder]

As far as I remember the biggest problem was SSH and the missing Windows headers.

The installation of a new GCC compiler and the #define-s are pretty strait forward.


Cheers,

recoder