Boost and ICU build scripts for MinGW-w64 (script update)

For details see Boost and ICU build scripts for MinGW-w64

Here you will find updated scripts for:

• Boost 1.60 - boost-1.60.0-w64-amd64.sh
• ICU 57.1 - icu-57.1-w64-amd64.sh

Boost and ICU build scripts for MinGW-w64

My MinGW distro is long gone now. However I still privately use a MinGW-w64 toolchain to test and study C++.

I have kept two scripts to build both ICU and Boost so I can have Boost libraries always available.

The scripts are for the latest version of both libraries. Build first ICU, uncompress the generated package and then build Boost.

You will need:

• Bash (eg from Git for Windows or MSYS);
• MinGW (from other distribuitions). I personally use the latest MinGW-w64 toolchain;
• Microsoft Macro Assembler to build Boost.Context (you can get it from, eg, a Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 Community Edition installation. See #7262 for details. See also Building Boost with MinGW64 without MASM);
• The following tools: bsdtar, diff, patch, gnufind, bzip2, unzip and xz (put them in a directory in the PATH);
• And the scripts: icu-55.1-w64-amd64.sh and boost-1.59.0-w64-amd64.sh

Steps:

• Create a directory, eg, C:\mingw-build;
• Under this directory create other three directories: dest, scripts and sources;
• Copy both icu-55.1-w64-amd64.sh and boost-1.59.0-w64-amd64.sh to the scripts directory;
• Download icu4c-55_1-src.tgz and icu4c-55_1-data.zip from ICU site to the sources directory;
• Download boost_1_59_0.tar.bz2 from Boost site to the sources directory;
• Download the MinGW-w64 toolschain and uncompress it to C:\MinGW64
• Configure your system and add C:\MinGW64\bin to the PATH
• Download the tools (bsdtar, diff, patch, gnufind, bzip2 and xz) to C:\MinGW64\bin (or any other directory in the PATH);
• Open Bash;
• Go to the scripts directory: cd /c/mingw-build/scripts
• Execute the ICU build script: ./icu-55.1-w64-amd64.sh
• If the build is successful the icuc-55.1-w64-amd64.tar.xz file is created in the C:\mingw-build\dest directory;
• Go to the MinGW64\bin directory: cd /c/MinGW64
• Uncompress the ICU package: bsdtar xzf /c/mingw-build/dest/icuc-55.1-w64-amd64.tar.xz
• Go back to the scripts directory: cd /c/mingw-build/scripts
• Execute the Boost build script: ./boost-1.59.0-w64-amd64.sh
• If the build is successful the boost-1.59.0-w64-amd64.tar.xz file is created in the C:\mingw-build\dest directory;
• Go to the MinGW64\bin directory: cd /c/MinGW64
• Uncompress the Boost package: bsdtar xzf /c/mingw-build/dest/boost-1.59.0-w64-amd64.tar.xz
• Now you have a MinGW-w64 installation with the Boost libraries

Please send your feedback: comments, suggestions and bug reports!!

DISCLAIMER: the scripts are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

MinGW Distro - December 2013 Edition

DISCLAIMER: this is a private, custom build of MinGW. It is neither supported nor sponsored by MinGW.org

Updates: GCC 4.8.2, GDB 7.6.1, Boost 1.55.0, ICU 52.1, SQLite 3.8.1, cURL 7.33.0, wxWidgets 3.0.0, POCO Libraries 1.4.6p2, Apache Portable Runtime 1.5.0, Apache Portable Runtime Utils 1.5.3

MinGW-Distro-Addons.exe - 77 Mb - Full with add-ons
SHA1: 029334806ff1ca1cadc1fd7cdbfeaa5a9fd4f9ad

This is the latest version I will provide. Unfortunately I have no time to keep track of the updates, work on patches and build the packages. In a next post I will make scripts and patches available for anyone that would take them and continue.

MinGW Distro - August 2013 Edition

DISCLAIMER: this is a private, custom build of MinGW. It is neither supported nor sponsored by MinGW.org

Updates: Boost 1.54.0, cURL 7.31.0, PCRE 8.33, FreeType 2.5.0, wxWidgets 2.9.5, xz 5.0.5

Added: Apache log4cxx 0.10.0, Apache Portable Runtime 1.4.8, Apache Portable Runtime iconv 1.2.1, Apache Portable Runtime Util 1.5.2

The ICU static libraries were removed. Now only ICU DLLs.

MinGW-Distro-Addons.exe - 73 Mb - Full with add-ons
SHA1: a73ddf6141535fd55935b083d86ddbdedcc291de

MinGW-Distro-Core.exe - 16 Mb - Core Components
SHA1: 6be8fd7ec3e65c6f25e4194dec9355d2ce7a9b00

For more information visit MinGW Distro

CodeLite 5.1 Project Templates for wxWidgets

CodeLite Templates

CodeLite is a nice open-source, cross plataform C and C++ IDE. One of its nicest features is the project templates. With them you can easily create a project from a template.

CodeLite 5.1 includes some templates to create wxWidgets projects. Unfortunately those templates do not work very well with my MinGW Distro.

The June 2013 edition contains the corrected templates. You can find them in the MinGW\ide directory.

Please copy those files to the directory templates\projects of your CodeLite installation.
In the future the Distro will come with additional templates for CodeLite.

MinGW Distro - June 2013 Edition

This release was delayed because of the last minute release of GCC 4.8.1

Updates: GCC 4.8.1, GDB 7.6, GraphicsMagick 1.3.18, SQLite 3.7.17, ICU 51.2, freeglut 2.8.1, libpng 1.6.2, libarchive 3.1.2, grep 2.14, zlib 1.2.8, GLFW 2.7.8, NASM 2.10.07, libxml2 2.9.1, file 5.14, binutils 2.23.2, FreeType 2.4.12

Added: LINQ for C++ 20130203, libharu 2.2.1

MinGW-Distro-Addons.exe - 75 Mb - Full with add-ons
SHA1: 4ab44b4b303f3090489d4bef721728d9f97106fb

MinGW-Distro-Core.exe - 16 Mb - Core Components
SHA1: 51acdd76db532697e53133368df21550898d5623

For more information visit MinGW Distro

Building Qt5 with MinGW

Building Qt with MinGW was always a nightmare: weird conflicts, a lot of patching and the result was not good.

Now with the recent release of Qt 5.0.2 things are a little better (hope they get even better with forthcoming Qt 5.1). I finally managed to build (or almost - QtWebkit fails to build, see below) it.

The steps I took are outlined below. If you want to try please let me know if they have worked for you too.

Qt building

Steps to Build

You'll need:

• my MinGW Distro 
• Qt source distribution
• Active Perl (or maybe Strawberry Perl - I didn't try this one)
• Python

Steps

• Make sure Perl, Python and MinGW are all in your PATH
• Create a directory C:\Qt-build
• Create a directory C:\Qt
• Uncompress the Qt source distribution to C:\Qt-build
• Remove directories qtwebkit and qtwebkit-examples-and-demos. For some reason they do not build
• Create a directory C:\Qt-build\build. You will get a tree like this:
  C:\
    Qt-build
      build
      qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.0.2
• Open the "MinGW Command Prompt"
• Enter cd C:\Qt-build\build
• Enter touch ..\qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.0.2\qtbase\.gitignore
• Enter ..\qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.0.2\configure -prefix C:\Qt -release -developer-build -opensource -shared -opengl desktop -qt-pcre -nomake tests
• Enter mingw32-make
• Enter mingw32-make install

The Qt headers and libraries will be installed in C:\Qt

GCC 4.8.0 build failing for MinGW

GCC 4.8.0 was released on March 22nd, so in time for April's release of the MinGW Distro.

Unfortunately it failed miserably to build. It is a known problem.

I hope that by the next release of MinGW Distro this problem is already fixed. I'll keep you informed.

MinGW Distro - April 2013 Release

Updates: Boost Libraries 1.53.0, cURL 7.29.0, ICU 51.1, libpng 1.5.14, libxml 2.9.0, libxslt 1.1.28, POCO 1.4.6p1, SQLite 3.7.16, OpenSSL 1.0.1e, GLFW 2.7.7, GMP 5.1.1, wget 1.14, gettext 0.18.2.1

Add: rapidjson 0.11

MinGW-Distro-Addons.exe - 75 Mb - Full with add-ons
SHA1: 4ab44b4b303f3090489d4bef721728d9f97106fb

MinGW-Distro-Core.exe - 16 Mb - Core Components
SHA1: 51acdd76db532697e53133368df21550898d5623

OpenSSL 1.0.1d and cURL 7.29.0

It happened again, now with OpenSSL and cURL. New versions of these libraries were released. See below how to update them. As with Boost before the next MinGW distro will include the updated OpenSSL and cURL.
Assuming you have installed it in C:\MinGW directory:

• Clean up the existing cURL files:

cd C:\MinGW
rmdir /s /q include\curl
rmdir /s /q include\openssl
rmdir /s /q ssl

• Download these files: curl-7.29.0.tar.xz and openssl-1.0.1d.tar.xz.
• Uncompress them in the MinGW installation directory:

cd C:\MinGW
bin\bsdtar -xvJf curl-7.29.0.tar.xz
bin\bsdtar -xvJf openssl-1.0.1d.tar.xz

Boost C++ Libraries release 1.53.0

The new release (1.53.0) of Boost Libraries was made available on February 4th, just 3 days after I released the Feburary 2013 edition of my MinGW distro that included release 1.52.0. Because of this I have built the new release and I'm making it available here as a separated download. As usual it also includes the ICU versions of both Boost RegEx and Boost Locale libraries. The next release of the MinGW distro will contain this version of Boost (or a newer if released meanwhile).
Assuming you have installed it in C:\MinGW directory:

• Clean up the existing Boost files:

cd C:\MinGW
rmdir /s /q include\boost
del lib\libboost*.*

• Download this file: boost-1.53.0.tar.xz
• Uncompress it in the MinGW installation directory:

cd C:\MinGW
bin\bsdtar -xvJf boost-1.53.0.tar.xz

MinGW Distro - February 2013 Release

By demand the add-on libraries have been included in the main package.

Updates: FreeType 2.4.11, GLEW 1.9.0, ICU 50.1.2, libssh2 1.4.3, libgmp 5.1.0, POCO 1.4.6, SQLite 3.7.15.2, jpeg 9

MinGW-Distro-Addons.exe - 75 Mb - Full with add-ons
SHA1: dbdf784f741efa0c0aa8cb3640bbb4dcbc45b707

MinGW-Distro-Core.exe - 16 Mb - Core Components
SHA1: 97b13f4ce75dc48f536c0c350a35758373125de5

Why another XML parsing library?

Some may have noted that in the December 2012 release of my MinGW Distribution I have included yet another XML parsing library: pugixml. Why this if it already has libxml2?

Well, while libxml2 is a complete, standard-compliant XML parsing library it lacks a DOM interface. With DOM it is easier to handle and to walk through the XML representation.

I have evaluated many simple to use, fast libraries: RapidXML, FastXML, AsmXML. And, of course pugixml. However pugixml is fast, has a good documentation and a DOM-like, modern interface that fits well with STL and C++11 ranged-for and lambdas. That was I was looking for.

MinGW Distro - December 2012 Release

Some people have reported that my website is down. Unfortunately depending where in the world you are the site is accessible or not. I'm investigating this issue with my hosting provider. Because of this issue and to ease the release process, this and next releases will be published here, in this blog in addition to the website.

MinGW Distro - December 2012 Release

Updates: binutils 2.23.1, Boost 1.52.0, PNG 1.5.13, TIFF 4.0.3, cURL 7.28.1, GraphicsMagick 1.3.17, POCO 1.4.5, SQLite 3.7.14.1.
New: pugixml 1.2

MinGW-Distro.exe - 43 Mb - Full
SHA1: 92d09d316c17da21c1607ba0938f260b67c8b8b8

MinGW-Distro-Core.exe - 16 Mb - Core Components
SHA1: b3ad4e5e587c915b25acbabd1fdfa0edda69d93f

DLLs for ICU and SDL

I have released last week the October 2012 edition of my MinGW Distro. Also available are a number of add-on libraries built with it. This time I also included in both ICU and SDL packages DLL versions of the libraries.
For ICU the reason is to minimize the size of generated binaries. ICU has a data library that contains charset and localization information. Statically linking the data library makes the programs too big. And if you have many programs this just makes things worse. Now you can dynamic link with the data library (and of course with the other ICU libraries) easing the deployment of your applications.
SDL is relased under LGPL license that imposes restrictions on how to distribute your application. Basically: according to LGPL you have to distribute the source code of your application if you (statically) link with the library. Dynamic link does not impose this restriction.

Why the MinGW Distro? Some interesting background

In 2011 the new C++ standard was about to be released. I then challenged myself to study it, if not the entire beast at least the most interesting parts. This of course demanded a compiler with the latest features of the new standard. At that time the only compiler available that was being updated frequently was GCC. But while it was released very often the MinGW port was not so fast. So, I realized that the best way was to build it myself. A fast search and I found Stephan T. Lavavej's build. It has everything I needed and more. OK. But I don't need all that more so I took his distro, removed some things, added others. And why not release it for others? Then it evolved from a small packaged archive with instructions on how to setup it to a simple, easy-to-use installer. I had already some experience with InnoSetup and it was simple to build an setup package.
And now we are here. Do you have any comments or suggestions to the distro? Things you'd like to see? Please let me know. While I have limited time and resources to play with it I promise to kindly evaluate any request.
Visit the MinGW Distro homepage to download the latest version.