Building GNU Go on Windows Platforms ========================== BUILDING WITH OLDER VISUAL STUDIO The distribution directories contain some .dsp and .dsw files with GNU Go. These have been brought up to date in the sense that they should work if you have the older VC++ with Visual Studio 6 but the distributed .dsp and .dsw files will only be of use with older version of Visual Studio. In most cases (unless you are building in Cygwin) the preferred way to build GNU Go on Windows platforms is to use CMake. CMake understands about many versions of Visual C/Visual Studio, and will generate project/solution files for the tools installed on your system. So even if you have Visual Studio 6 you may use CMake and dispense with the distributed .dsp and .dsw files. ========================== BUILDING WITH VISUAL STUDIO PROJECT FILES Before you compile the GNU Go source, you need to run CMake first, to generate the build files you'll give to Visual Studio. From the cmd.exe command prompt, CD into the GNU Go source directory. To confirm you're in the right place, you should see the file 'CMakeLists.txt' in the top-level directory of the GNU Go code (as well as others in lower subdirectories). Direct CMake to generate the new Visual Studio build files by typing: cmake CMakeLists.txt Compile the code by invoking the newly-created Solution file: vcbuild GNUGo.sln This will take a few moments, as CMake generates 4 debug/retail targets: debug release minsizerel relwithdebinfo For each of these targets, Visual Studio is generating a version of gnugo.exe: interface\debug\gnugo.exe interface\release\gnugo.exe interface\minsizerel\gnugo.exe interface\relwithdebinfo\gnugo.exe Additionally, there is an 'Install' target available, that will copy the the gnugo.exe into the %ProgramFiles% directory. To do this, type: vcbuild INSTALL.vcproj This should result in copying GNU/Go into: "%ProgramFiles%\GNUGo\bin\gnugo.exe" --options In addition to command line use, CMake also has a GUI version. Users of the Visual Studio GUI might prefer to use that. ========================== BUILDING WITH NMAKE MAKEFILES GNU Go will also build using NMake makefiles. Optionally, instead of Visual Studio project/solution files, you may direct CMake to generate NMake makefiles. To generate the makefiles: cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" CMakeLists.txt The default rule for the makefile is 'all'. Use the 'help' rule to show a list of available targets. nmake -f Makefile help To compile GNU Go: nmake -f Makefile all On some systems, GNU GO may fail to build when using NMake makefiles. It only fails the first time run, run NMake again with the 'clean all' targets, and it will compile the second and subsequent times. nmake -f Makefile clean all Which will successfully generate a gnugo.exe. interface\gnugo.exe --options ========================== BUILDING WITH MINGW MAKEFILES: GNU Go can be built on Windows systems using MinGW. This development environment uses: the GCC compiler (gcc.exe, not cl.exe), the Microsoft C runtime libraries (MSCRT, not GLibC), the GNU Make build tool (mingw32-make.exe, not NMake), all from the Windows shell (cmd.exe, not sh/bash). For CMake to work, in addition to the base MinGW installation, the C++ compiler (g++.exe) and GNU Make (mingw32-make.exe) need to be installed. This was tested using GCC v3, not the experimental v4. To debug, use GDB, as the GCC-generated symbols won't work with NTSD/Windbg/Visual Studio. To create the makfiles, run CMake with the MinGW generator option: cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" CMakeLists.txt To build GNU Go, from a cmd.exe shell, run GNU Make (against the newly-created 'Makefile' and it's default 'all' target): mingw32-make ..\interface\gnugo.exe --options ========================== BUILDING WITH MSYS MAKEFILES (MinGW) GNU Go can be built on Windows systems using MSYS. This development environment uses: the GCC compiler (gcc.exe, not cl.exe), the Microsoft C runtime libraries (MSCRT, not GLibC), the GNU Make build tool (make, not NMake), all from the GNU Bash (sh.exe, not cmd.exe). To create the makfiles, run CMake with the MSYS generator option: cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" CMakeLists.txt Start MSYS's Bash shell, either clicking on a shortcut on from the command line: cd /d c:\msys\1.0 msys.bat To build GNU Go, from a Bash shell, run GNU Make (against the newly-created 'Makefile' and it's default 'all' target): make ../interface/gnugo.exe --options To debug, use GDB, as the GCC-generated symbols won't work with NTSD/Windbg/Visual Studio. ========================== BUILDING ON CYGWIN With Cygwin, you should be able to tar zxvf gnugo-3.8.tar.gz cd gnugo-3.8 env CC='gcc -mno-cygwin' ./configure make ========================== Testing on Windows: Regress.cmd is a simplified cmd.exe-centric port of the main gnugo Unix shell script regress.sh. It can be used to help verify that the generated binary might be operational. Read the script's comment header for more information. For access to the full GNU Go tests, use Unix, not Windows. To test: cd regression regress.cmd ..\interface\gnugo.exe ==========================