[liblouis-liblouisxml] Questions about the VS projects

From: "Norbert Markus" <hamilfonz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2017 17:15:38 +0200

Paulw.torchtrust signatureHi Paul,

I am trying to get under control your liblouisutdml solution for Visual Studio
downloaded from your pull request #23. My first objective is to be able to
build the projects with ctrl-F5 encountering no errors. This is not yet
achieved, unfortunately.
A further objective is to update the source to the latest liblouis and
liblouisutdml versions and to successfully build the projects including the
DLLs and EXEs, thus to obtain an up-to-date runnable version (especially of
file2brl.exe) for windows.

In your previous related message, You wrote that you have created two projects,
one for liblouis and another for liblouisutdml. What is the pull request number
of the former (i.e., for liblouis).

What is the relationship between these solutions from the respect of Visual
Studio? Is there a common entry point to start the build process of all
components, or should these projects be built in a particular order and to be
referenced to each other?
For instance, should I first build the project for liblouis, then another
project for liblouisutdml referring to the result(s) of the liblouis build, and
then in a third pass, should the project for file2brl be built based on the
results of the former two?

I have copied the folder for the liblouisutdml solution downloaded from git to:
C:\users\Norbert\documents\Visual Studio 2015\projects
Here I truncated the original download folder name to liblouisutdml.

I found all the VS related stuff in subfolders of the windows folder. I assume,
not everything is needed for VS in the complete downloaded folder, but at this
moment I am unable to figure out what to jettison with no severe consequences.
I found two .sln files:
windows\msvc\file2brl\file2brl.sln
windows\msvc\liblouisutdml\liblouisutdml.sln

In both cases, I began the procedure by clicking on one of these that launched
VS and loaded the solution. I did not hope it will work for the first try but I
pressed ctrl-F5 and got a question: "This project is out of date. Would you
like to build it anyway?" I am not exactly sure what it means but I answered
yes to proceed.
Then: build failed.
In case of liblouisutdml.sln, there were 24 errors and 2 warnings. I checked a
few of the errors complaining about that liblouisutdml.h and liblouis.h
(several of them) cannot be found here:
c:\users\Norbert\documents\Visual Studio
2015\projects\liblouisutdml\liblouisutdml\liblouisutdml.h

It hints, that I copied too many depths of the downloaded folder to the
projects directory, but it is not exactly clear what path to provide for a
successful build.
Can you help me find out where to copy what of the material you've uploaded
last year?
I assume manually correcting all instances of the references to such missing
files wouldn't be a wise method.

A similar attempt to build the project for file2brl produces 8 errors of
similar kind. In addition to missing header files, there are errors missing
certain type definitions, e.g., among others: loglevels and widechar if I
remember well.

What are the necessary steps to get these solutions configured appropriately?

Some further questions:
In the windows\msvc\liblouisutdml\lib folder, I found libiconv.dll,
libiconv.lib, libxml2.dll and libxml2.lib needed for xml parsing.
How did you obtain these files?
Have you created another vs project to build them? (I haven't found anything in
your liblouisutdml project to hint that libxml2 is built as part of that
solution.)
Have you created these files by running a command line build process included
in the libxml2 source folders?
Or have you found and downloaded prebuilt binaries?

Earlier, I ran a few rounds with this: first I obtained the latest libxml2
version (2.9.4), but its header files caused lots of error messages when I
tried to build liblouisutdml using a command line nmake tool.
Later I found the source for version 2.7.2 that appeared to be adequate but the
nmake script that builds liblouisutdml seems not to build the libxml2 binaries.
Then I looked around to download prebuilt binaries but I could not find
versions as old as 2.7.2. Even the more recent packages include no .lib files.

Please help me if you can, configure and build your original VS solution on my
local machine.

Thanks in advance, your help would be invaluable.
Best Regards, Norbert.

[liblouis-liblouisxml] Questions about the VS projects

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