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2.4.3 Windows using MinGW

Written by Eric Sunshine, sunshine@sunshineco.com. Originally written by Philip Wyett, philipwyett@dsl.pipex.com. Last updated 3 May 2004.

These instructions are for building Crystal Space with MinGW, the Minimalist GNU compiler for Windows.

http://www.mingw.org/

Necessary Resources

Download the following packages:

Installation

Follow these instructions to install the packages which you downloaded. Be sure to install them in the order shown.

Note: If you ever install a new version of MSYS, then you should also re-install the `cs-win32libs' package.

Selecting the Renderer Architecture

At this moment we have two completely different renderer architectures in Crystal Space. The old renderer (which is still default) and the new renderer. The new renderer hasn't been made default yet because it is still considered to be experimental and some features haven't been ported yet (like software renderer which works only partially and fog). On the other hand the new renderer supports shaders, stencil shadows, and other advanced OpenGL stuff and for most people it seems to work very well. So we personally recommend trying out the new renderer first. If it doesn't work right for you then you should send us a report and go back to old renderer then. To use the new renderer you should add the `--enable-new-renderer' option to configure below.

Building Crystal Space

You must configure and build Crystal Space from within the MSYS shell environment. To launch this environment, click on the MSYS icon which the installation procedure placed upon your desktop, or choose the MSYS item from the Programs menu. This will launch a Unix-like shell window into which you type commands.

Crystal Space can be built with either `make' or Jam (see GettingJam). Both tools work equally well. The `cs-win32libs' package contains a pre-built version of Jam which you can invoke simply by typing `jam' at the MSYS command prompt. In the examples below, wherever `make -k' is used, you can instead substitute `jam' if you so desire.

At the shell prompt, go to your `CS' directory with the `cd' command. For example, if Crystal Space resides at `C:\work\CS', invoke the command `cd /c/work/CS'. Next, configure and build the project with the following sequence of commands:

 
./configure
make -k all

The `-k' option used in `make -k all' instructs the `make' utility to ignore errors and continue building the project. This may be necessary if you are using the bleeding-edge version of Crystal Space from the CVS repository and some module fails to build correctly.

If you prefer to build a debug version of Crystal Space, substitute the following commands for those shown above:

 
./configure --enable-debug
make -k all

If you wish to build with debugging information and for the new renderer architecture you can do:

 
./configure --enable-debug --enable-new-renderer
make -k all

If the Crystal Space source directory is read-only, if it is shared between several developers, or if you simply dislike building a project within its source tree, you can instead configure and build from a different directory. For instance:

 
mkdir $HOME/builddir
cd $HOME/builddir
/c/work/CS/configure --enable-debug
make -k all

Finally, if you want to utilize Crystal Space as a software development kit (SDK), you can install it and then clean up the detritus of the build process:

 
make install
make distclean

Additional Build Options

Sometimes it is a good idea to remove all of the built programs and executable files and start from scratch. You can do this with the following commands:

 
make clean
make -k all

Once in a while it is even a good idea to completely clean and re-configure the project. This may be required if you are using the bleeding-edge version of Crystal Space from the CVS repository after some radical change.

 
make distclean
./configure
make -k all

Troubleshooting

If you successfully built Crystal Space, yet find that you can not run the applications from the `CS\' root directory, a possible cause might be that the pathname leading up to the `CS\' directory might have embedded whitespace. For instance, if you installed the project in `C:\my stuff\CS', try renaming the path to `C:\my_stuff\CS' or `C:\mystuff\CS'.

Blasting the Past

If you were previously using the older, deprecated `cs_mingw_0.??.exe' package which contained the entire MinGW distribution along with other unrelated tools and resources, or the `csmingwlibs' package, it is highly recommended that you first remove the older package, as well as any residual files and resources before installing the newer MinGW, MSYS, and `cs-win32libs' packages. For best results, it would probably be wise to remove the entire old `MinGW' directory (though you may want to make a backup copy of it just in case) and clean your environment variables of any references to the old resource directories.


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