README.MSWindows.txt - 2016-10-16 - Building FLTK under Microsoft Windows ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS ========== 1 INTRODUCTION 2 HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING MinGW/Cygwin 2.1 The Tools 2.2 Recommended Command Line Build Environment 2.3 Prerequisites 2.4 Downloading and Unpacking 2.5 Configuring FLTK 2.6 Building FLTK 2.7 Testing FLTK 2.8 Installing FLTK 2.9 Creating new Projects 3 HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING VISUAL STUDIO 2008 3.1 Prerequisites 3.2 Downloading and Unpacking 3.3 Configuring FLTK 3.4 Building FLTK 3.5 Testing FLTK 3.6 Installing FLTK 3.7 Creating new Projects 4 HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING VISUAL STUDIO 2010 OR LATER 4.1 Prerequisites 4.2 Downloading and Unpacking 4.3 Configuring FLTK 4.4 Building FLTK 4.5 Testing FLTK 4.6 Installing FLTK 4.7 Creating new Projects 5 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 7 LINKS 6 DOCUMENT HISTORY INTRODUCTION ============== FLTK 1.3 and later is officially supported on Windows (2000,) 2003, XP, and later. Older Windows versions are not officially supported, but may still work. The main reason is that the OS version needs to support UTF-8. FLTK 1.3 is known to work on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Windows 10. FLTK currently supports the following development environments on the Windows platform: - Free Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express and Visual C++ 2010 Express using the supplied workspace and project files. Older and the commercial versions can be used as well, if they can open the project files. Visual C++ 2015 Express/Community can be used with the Visual C++ 2010 project files. Be sure to get your service packs! The project files can be found in the ide/ directory. Please read ide/README.IDE for more info about this. - GNU toolsets (Cygwin or MinGW) hosted on Windows. CAUTION: Libraries built by any one of these environments can not be mixed with object files from any other environment! HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING MinGW and Cygwin ========================================== This chapter of this document gives a brief overview of compiling and using FLTK with the Cygwin and MinGW compiler toolkits. Both toolkits provide a build environment based around the GNU C/C++ compiler. Further information is available from the FLTK website at https://www.fltk.org, such as this Howto note: https://www.fltk.org/articles.php?L598 The Cygwin build environment supplies a library (the Cygwin DLL) that is primarily intended to provide a number of Unix-like POSIX facilities for programs being ported to the Windows environment (Win32 or WinNT). Cygwin also supplies a very Unix-like build environment for Windows, including the "BASH" Bourne-compatible shell and all of the standard Unix file utilities (ls, cat, grep, etc.). Cygwin is developed by Cygnus (now part of RedHat, Inc). Although provided for free download under the GPL, distributing programs that require the Cygwin DLL under a license other than the GPL requires a commercial license for the Cygwin DLL. Native Windows programs that do not require the Cygwin DLL (compiled and linked with the "-mno-cygwin" option) may be released under any license freely. Note: Since December 2009, there is a new gcc 4.x compiler that doesn't support the -mno-cygwin option anymore. You must use the older gcc-3 compiler instead. An alternative is to install the new (since about Oct. 2010) mingw cross tools that support newer gcc compilers for building native Windows applications (like -mno-cygwin above). Currently you would have to install mingw64-i686-gcc-g++ for 32-bit Windows applications (despite its name!), and/or mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++ for 64-bit applications. You may also need to install the corresponding '-headers' packages as well. Currently these tools support gcc 4.5.x or newer, but the setup for FLTK is somewhat more complicated and not yet completely supported automatically (you may need to edit some lines in the generated makeinclude file). The MinGW distribution (Minimalist GNU for Windows) provides a similar toolset but geared solely towards native Windows development without the Unix-like POSIX library. The lack of any libraries under the GPL or any other restrictive license means that programs built with the MinGW environment may always be released under any license freely. MinGW also supplies a Unix-like build environment for Windows, including MSYS (a Bourne-compatible shell) and the standard Unix file utilities (ls, cat, grep, etc.) If you are not familiar with these GNU-like toolkits please refer to the links section later in this note. In particular, check out their license conditions carefully before use. The Tools ----------- There are currently three main configurations supported by FLTK with the GNU tools: 1. Cygwin: Built using the Cygwin toolset and using the Unix-like POSIX compatibility layer provided by the Cygwin DLL. 2. Cygwin using the "-mno-cygwin" option: Built using the Cygwin toolset but not using the Cygwin DLL. 3. MinGW: Built using the MinGW utilities, compiler and tools. This is, in many aspects, analogous to the Cygwin "-mno-cygwin" option. This is the recommended one if you want to build native Windows programs only. Recommended Command Line Build Environment -------------------------------------------- Our recommendation is to: 1. Get the current Cygwin toolset. This can either produce executables that do or do not rely on the Cygwin DLL (check licensing) at your choice. 2. Get the latest MinGW toolset. It is recommended that you also get the MSYS shell and the msysDTK developer toolset. This will only produce normal Windows native executables without any Unix or POSIX compatibility layer. See the links section below for more information. Either option can generate windows-native executables and option 1 can provide a Unix-like POSIX portability layer that is reliant on a GPLed library. See the later sections for detailed information about using one of these configurations. Prerequisites --------------- In order to build FLTK from the command line, you need to install the MinGW environment from www.mingw.org. The graphical installer "mingw-get-inst" can be downloaded here for free: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started Launch the installer and follow the instructions. In the "Select Components" dialog, add "C++ Compiler", "MSYS Basic System", and "MinGW Developer Toolkit". Wait for the installer to finish. After downloading and installing, you need to launch the MinGW Shell through the Start menu. Downloading and Unpacking --------------------------- Download FLTK from here: https://www.fltk.org/software.php into your home folder. The default location as seen from MSWindows is similar to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\matt\ If you are familiar with "git" and like to stay current with your version, you will find the git access parameters at the bottom of that page. Unpack FLTK into a convenient location. I like to have everything in my dev directory: cd mkdir dev cd dev tar xvfz fltk-1.3.xxxx.tar.gz cd fltk-1.3.xxxx Configuring FLTK ------------------ If you got FLTK via git then you need one extra step. Otherwise skip over this part. Stay in your FLTK source-code directory and type the following: NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh Now configure your FLTK installation: ./configure ADVANCED: type "./configure --help" to get a complete list of optional configuration parameters. These should be pretty self-explanatory. Some more details can be found in README. :END_ADVANCED The configuration script will check your machine for the required resources which should all have been part of your MinGW installation. Review the Configuration Summary, maybe take some notes. ADVANCED: some versions of MinGW/Msys are broken and complain about a missing --enable-auto-import. The solution is to upgrade to the current release. If that is not possible, you can include the --enable-auto-import flag when linking: ./configure LDFLAGS=-Wl,--enable-auto-import :END_ADVANCED Known Problems: There is a known incompatibility with some Windows git tools that may not set the correct line endings for autoconf. If you get strange error messages when running ./configure or make, you may need to convert configh.in to "Unix line endings" (LF-only). These error messages are unspecific, e.g. compilation errors like: error: 'U32' does not name a type error: 'bmibuffer' was not declared in this scope You can fix the line endings with the MinGW/msys tool 'unix2dos' (u2d) or with your favorite editor, if it allows to change the line endings, then run autoconf and ./configure again. For further information see this bug report: https://www.fltk.org/newsgroups.php?gfltk.bugs+v:10197 Building FLTK --------------- Now this is easy. Stay in your FLTK source-code directory and type: make The entire FLTK toolkit including many test programs will be built for you. No warnings should appear. Testing FLTK -------------- After a successful build, you can test FLTK's capabilities: test/demo Installing FLTK ----------------- If you did not change any of the configuration settings, FLTK will be installed in "/usr/local/include" and "/usr/local/lib" by typing make install It is possible to install FLTK in user space by changing the installation path to a location within the user account by adding the "--prefix=PREFIX" parameter to the "./configure" command. Creating new Projects ----------------------- FLTK provides a neat script named "fltk-config" that can provide all the flags needed to build FLTK applications using the same flags that were used to build the library itself. Running "fltk-config" without arguments will print a list of options. The easiest call to compile an FLTK application from a single source file is: fltk-config --compile myProgram.cxx "fltk-config" and "fluid" will be installed in "/usr/local/bin/" by default. I recommend that you add it to the command search path. HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING VISUAL STUDIO 2008 ============================================ Prerequisites --------------- In order to build FLTK from within VisualStudio 2008, you need to install the VisualC developer environment from the Microsoft web site. The Express edition is free of charge and sufficient to develop FLTK applications: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/ You must make sure that at least VisualStudio 2008 Service Pack 1 is installed or building FLTK on a multicore CPU will be very painful! Downloading and Unpacking --------------------------- Download FLTK from here: https://www.fltk.org/software.php If you are familiar with "git" and like to stay current with your version, you will find the git access parameters at the bottom of that page. Unpack FLTK by using an appropriate unpacker and copy the new folder into a convenient location. I have set up a "dev" folder in my home folder for all my projects. Configuring FLTK ------------------ Launch VisualStudio. Open the project file in ...\fltk-1.3.xxxx\ide\VisualC2008\fltk.sln Choose "Debug" or "Release" mode from the "Solution Configurations" menu. Building FLTK --------------- Use the context menu of the "demo" project to "Set as StartUp Project". Then select "Build Solution" from the "Build" menu or press F7 to build all libraries. VisualC 2008 has a bug that messes up building a Solution on multicore CPUs. Make sure that Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is installed or, as a workaround, set the "maximum number of parallel project builds" to 1 (Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run > maximum number of parallel project builds). Also, repeating the build command two or three times may clear unresolved reference errors. Testing FLTK -------------- Select "Start Debugging" from the "Debug" menu or just press F5 to run the Demo program. Use "Demo" to explore all test programs. Installing FLTK ----------------- The default location for VisualC 2008 libraries and headers is here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ It is possible to move the FLTK libraries, headers, and Fluid into the respective subdirectories, so that they are available for future development without adding link and include paths to the solution. copy the entire FL directory into the include path add all files from ide\VisualC2008\FL to the FL directory copied above (this is currently only one file: abi-version.h) copy all .lib files from the fltk lib directory to the VC lib directory copy fluid.exe in the fluid directory to the bin directory I highly discourage using dll's (dynamically linking libraries) on MSWindows because they will require an installation process and likely cause version conflicts. Use the static .lib libraries instead. Creating new Projects ----------------------- This chapter assumes that libraries and headers are copied into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ Create a new project of type "General", "Empty Project" and add a simple "C++" file to it. The FLTK "hello" source code is a good base. Now open the Project Properties dialog and add "Comctl32.lib" and all the FLTK libraries that you want to use (at least "fltk.lib") to Additional Dependencies (Configuration Properties > Linker > Additional Dependencies). In the same dialog, add "WIN32" to the C++ Preprocessor Definitions (Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Preprocessor > Preprocessor Definitions). Compile and run your test program with F5. You can also include .fl resources: add a new Header file to your project, but let the name end in .fl. Right-click and select "Open with...". Add "fluid.exe" from the "bin" directory and set it as the default editor. To automatically compile .fl files, open the Properties editor and set the Custom Build Steps to: Command Line: fluid.exe -c $(InputPath) Description: Compiling Fluid .fl file Outputs: $(InputDir)$(InputName).cxx; $(InputDir)$(InputName).h Now add the generated .cxx file to your project as well. Whenever the .fl file is changed, the corresponding .cxx file will be recompiled. HOW TO BUILD FLTK USING VISUAL STUDIO 2010 OR LATER ==================================================== Prerequisites --------------- In order to build FLTK from within VisualStudio 2010 or later, you need to install the VisualC developer environment from the Microsoft web site. The Express edition is free of charge and sufficient to develop FLTK applications: http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/ Downloading and Unpacking --------------------------- Download FLTK from here: https://www.fltk.org/software.php If you are familiar with "git" and like to stay current with your version, you will find the git access parameters at the bottom of that page. Unpack FLTK by using an appropriate unpacker and copy the new folder into a convenient location. I have set up a "dev" folder in my home folder for all my projects. Configuring FLTK ------------------ Launch VisualStudio. Open the project file in .../fltk-1.3.xxxx/ide/VisualC2010/fltk.sln Choose "Debug" or "Release" mode from the "Solution Configurations" menu. Building FLTK --------------- Use the context menu of the "demo" project to "Set as StartUp Project". Then select "Build Solution" from the "Build" menu or press F7 to build all libraries. Testing FLTK -------------- Select "Start Debugging" from the "Debug" menu or just press F5 to run the Demo program. Use "Demo" to explore all test programs. Installing FLTK ----------------- The default location for VisualC 2010 libraries and headers is here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\ It is possible to move the FLTK libraries, headers, and Fluid into the respective subdirectories, so that they are available for future development without adding link and include paths to the solution. copy the entire FL directory into the include path add all files from ide\VisualC2010\FL to the FL directory copied above (this is currently only one file: abi-version.h) copy all .lib files from the fltk lib directory to the VC lib directory copy fluid.exe in the fluid directory to the bin directory I highly discourage using dll's (dynamically linking libraries) on MSWindows because they will require an installation process and likely cause version conflicts. Use the static .lib libraries instead. Creating new Projects ----------------------- This chapter assumes that libraries and headers are copied into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\ Create a new project of type "General", "Empty Project" and add a simple "C++" file to it. The FLTK "hello" source code is a good base. Now open the Project Properties dialog and add "Comctl32.lib" and all the FLTK libraries that you want to use (at least "fltk.lib") to Additional Dependencies (Configuration Properties > Linker > Additional Dependencies). In the same dialog, add "WIN32" to the C++ Preprocessor Definitions (Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Preprocessor > Preprocessor Definitions). Compile and run your test program with F5. You can also include .fl resources: add a new Header file to your project, but let the name end in .fl. Right-click and select "Open with...". Add "fluid.exe" from the "bin" directory and set it as the default editor. To automatically compile .fl files, open the Properties editor and change the Element Type to Custom Build and click Apply. Now set the Custom Build Steps to: Command Line: fluid.exe -c %(FullPath) Description: Compiling Fluid .fl file Outputs: $(InputDir)$(InputName).cxx; $(InputDir)$(InputName).h Now add the generated .cxx file to your project as well. Whenever the .fl file is changed, the corresponding .cxx file will be recompiled. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ============================ Why does a console window appear when I run my program? --------------------------------------------------------- Windows has a flag that determines whether an application runs in the foreground with a console or in the background without a console. If you're using gcc (i.e. MinGW or Cygwin), then use the linker option "-mwindows" to make your application run in the background and "-mconsole" to run in the foreground. Use fltk-config --ldflags to see appropriate linker flags, or use fltk-config --compile to compile a single source file. If you're using MS VC++, then you must set the linker option "/subsystem:windows" to create a "Windows" program (w/o console window), or set the linker option "/subsystem:console" for a console program, i.e. with a console window. These options are set differently in the FLTK project files, depending on whether you select a "Debug" or "Release" build. Other compilers and build systems may have different options. Keep in mind that a windows application cannot send output to stdout, even if you run it from an existing console application. (Note: A special case of this exists if running a MinGW application from the command line of an MSYS shell, when an application is able to write to stdout, even if compiled with "-mwindows". The same applies to Cygwin.) How do I get OpenGL to work? ------------------------------ Both builds should automatically support OpenGL. The configuration file config.h has a number of settings which control compile-time compilation. One such setting is "HAVE_GL". This may be set to 0 to disable Open GL operation. Changing the line in config.h to #define HAVE_GL 1 will change this to compile and link in OpenGL. LINKS ======= The following links may be of use: 1. Main Cygwin homepage: http://www.cygwin.com/ 2. Main Mingw homepage: http://www.mingw.org/ In particular look for the MinGW FAQ at this link for a lot of useful Mingw-native development documentation. 3. Check out the FLTK newsgroups at the FLTK homepage: https://www.fltk.org/ Its archival search facilities are EXTREMELY useful to check back through previous problems with this sort of configuration before posting new questions. 4. GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) compiler homepage: http://gcc.gnu.org/ 5. OpenGL page - for OpenGL and GLUT libs http://www.opengl.org/ DOCUMENT HISTORY ================== Oct 25 2010 - matt: restructured entire document and verified instructions Dec 20 2010 - matt: merged with README.win32 Dec 22 2010 - AlbrechtS: added newer Cygwin (cross/mingw-w64) options Feb 24 2012 - AlbrechtS: clarified console window FAQ