Again on external compilation for windows: MINGW - Pd-list

29 Jun 2007


      If someone cares I wrote few lines about compilation
of externals on win using mingw (in the PD forum). 
The procedure is oversimplified on some parts
but here it is. If you have comments (or if there
are errors) just let me know.
Even if MSVC offers an integrated environment for 
developing there
can be some good reasons for giving a try to the old-man
"unix" way of
compiling, which in windows is best represented by MINGW32 and
cygwin. Both offers linux-like environments (i.e. command
line tools)
for compiling and other shell tasks which, sometimes, in
windows are
a pain in the ass.
There are at least three good reasons for giving a look at
mingw:

gives strong linux compatibility on external compilation
 (almost same command lines arguments etc.)
there is the possibility to use makefiles in an almost

straightforward way
    (with minor modifications to linux makefiles).
3) no dependency on expensive MS programs (except for the
    small, bug-free Operating System ;-)
I did this exercise by porting the E. Lyon "LyonPoutpourry"
externals for win
(http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~elyon/LyonSoftware/Pd/). Give a
look at
the win source package: inside there is a makefile for
darwin (MAC)
linux and win. I added the latter, and as you can see the
modifications
are minor.
----------- 1. Prelude: compilation environment
First of all we have to set once for all the compilation
environment.
Let's forget for the moment cygwin and concentrate on
mingw32 (http://www.mingw.org/). The following is taken from
(H.C. Steiner's wiki
http://www.puredata.org/docs/developer/mingw)
Download the MinGW package installer and run it:
(http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ming  -5.1.1.exe)

Choose the Candidate distribution. Install the defaults and
add the g++ compiler, g77 compiler, and MinGW make or you
can just download my MinGW install, MinGW-Pd.tar.bz2, and
uncompress it so that its installed into C:\MinGW.
Then we need MSYS which is a shell (an interpreter of the
commands, like a
colorful dos prompt ;-)
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ming  1.0.10.exe
Now you will be using the MSYS shell that was installed from
the MSYS installer. You can launch it from the Desktop
shortcut or Start -> Programs -> MinGW -> MSYS -> msys
----------- 2. Allegro: compilation trial ------------------
a. open MSYS
b. at the prompt type:
cd c:
(or the drive you whish to go for the pd external compilation)
c. go to the external directory (note the backslashes
instead of slashes !),
mine is external-compiling. Inside I have helloworld.c
cd
alberto/backup/PureData_Archive/patches/AlbertoZ/external-compiling/
d. copy m_pd.h (from the PD distribution directory) into
external-compiling
(or whatever is its name)
e. type:
gcc -c helloworld.c -o helloworld.o
f. type:
ld -export_dynamic -shared -o helloworld.dll helloworld.o
c:/Programmi/pd039e
xt4/bin/pd.dll
(this is the linker step. note that I linked to a particular
version of pd.dll - 0.39 extended test 4, so probably (I'm
not sure about this) the external will
run on 0.39 only. Can someone confrm this?)
g. If everything was ok then you should have a
helloworld.dll in your
directory. Move it on the extra folder of your pd distribution
(I assume that extra folder is in the pd predefined path)
and make a
new patch with the helloworld object.  Again, if everything
is correct,
you should have a "Hello world!!" printed on the console.
----------- 3. Adagio: makefile ------------------
A makefile can be used for compilation. Even if a simple
helloworld
application does not need it, complex programs may do.
The makefile.win is attached with this post. Modify it
according to your
path in 
Make sure you have
helloworld.c
m_pd.h
makefile.win
in your directory. Now type at MSYS prompt:
make -f makefile.win
This will automatically produce:
the object, the linker step (the dll) and will copy the
helloworld.dll
in the extra folder of you pd distribution (overwriting the
existing one ;-).
----------- 4. Allegro con brio: conclusions ------------------
Why not give a try to the old-man compilation on Win?
:-)
----------- 5. Minuetto: greetings ------------------
I apologize if I said some crap somewhere, just let me know
if it
doesn't work. Have fun!
Best regards,
Alberto
http://puredata.org/Members/AlbertoZ