Re: tutorials for compilation of wxWidgets on windows -- part 1, erata

  • From: "jaffar" <jaffar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:57:29 +0800

Hi Graham. After you compile wxWidgets, you need to fine tune your build. Go to the lib directory. There is a VC_mswd or VC_mswud folder, depending on whether you built the toolkit with just debug or unicode debug. In either tirectory, there is a subdirectory called wx and the wx.h settings file is in there. Open it and run through the flags, enabling or disabling whatever you need or not need, as the case may be. Look for the ODBC option and check if it is enabled. Enable it if you so wish. Cheers! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Graham Hardy" <graham.hardy@xxxxxxxxx> 

To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 11:46 AM
Subject: RE: tutorials for compilation of wxWidgets on windows -- part 1, erata 



Hi all,
Firstly, I absolutely love the sound of these libraries, and many thanks to 
Jaffar and others for bringing this to our attention, and to Jaffar for
writing this quick tutorial. (Jaffar, I actually got this to compile with
the Microsoft C++ compiler!) The only problem I am experiencing is this: A
lot of the sample programs were giving me an error about not finding a
library called odbc32.lib. Naturally, I went and rebuilt the system, this
time enabling the ODBC setting in config.vc. However, it still cannot find
this file. Do you know whether I am doing anything wrong?

Many thanks,
Graham.


-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jaffar
Sent: November 25, 2007 3:19 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: tutorials for compilation of wxWidgets on windows -- part 1, erata 

Hi.  Here is a revised version of part 1 of my wxWidgets compilation on
windows tutorial. I made some errors during the writing of the tutorial the 
first time, so ignore that and concentrate on this correct one instead.
There is also additional info that i thought i should include with it.

Hi all.  As an unbiased approach towards writing these tutorials on
compiling wxWidgets on windows, I thought I'll write them up on my
experiences based on the 3 most used C/c++ compilers, Vc++, BCC and Gcc
using the MinGW environment.  This is also an intro for those of you who
might be interested in exploring the possibilities of venturing into this
great open source programming resource.  Please note that my emphasis here
will be on WxWidgets itself, Not on it's derivatives such as wxPython or
wxPerl, but the main wxWidgets which is the C++ framework or toolkit. Also 
note that i am not going to instruct you in it's use as the teaching of it
is well documented on it's website, but concentrate solely on it's build and 
compilation, particularly from the command line as i think personally that
this would be the shortest and most time effective approach.
Introduction.
What is wxWidgets?  Like MFC, it is a c++ framework or toolkit which
provides you with wrappers, classes and libraries to build a Windows program 
with c++.  Unlike MFC though, it is free, open source and cross platform,
meaning that you could program, for example, Windows GUIS on unix, then port it to Microsoft Windows and vice versa, then give it a native look and feel. 
For more info on WXWidgets, please refer to:
http://www.wxwidgets.org
For instructions on it's usage, please go to www.wxwidgets.org/wiki from
where you can get a wealth of documentation and reference these tutorials as 
well.  Please note the the use of wxWidgets is governed by the wxWindows
license version 3.1 which allows you to create both open source and
commercial apps with wxWidgets without any limitation as long as
acknowledgement of the fact that the app was built with wxWidgets is
forthcoming from you the vendor.
As of this writing, the latest stable version of wxWidgets that is
recommended  for download and use is version2.8.6.
However, if you are not of the faint hearted and would like to try and test out unstable and buggy code, but endowed with the latest features, you could try getting the nightly snapshot from it's cvs branch. I wouldn't recommend 
this cause of action to any novice though, and I wouldn't want to be
responsible for ensuing headaches or system aches as the case might be, so
exercise caution and really make sure you know what you're doing before
pursuing this cause of action.
WxWidgets comes in many flavors as would be expected out of  it's cross
platform nature.
there is wxWidgets for Motif, WxWidgets for x11, WxWidgets for os2 and I
could go on.  But what we are primarily interested in, in this scenario is
WxWidgets.exe which is a typical windows executable binary, and WXAll which 
has versions of all the platforms it covers in one zip or bz2 file.  To
obtain either of this, go to http://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads
and follow either the links which say sourceforge or UK Mirror.  I highly
recommend the UK mirror as it is much faster and you don't have to wait for 
page download time which could be very irksome in the case of the
SourceForge website.  You could also follow the direct version link, but
that will take you to Sourceforge.  In any case, choose which ever binary
suits your needs.  If you are more comfortable with the standard windows
installation procedure, choose the wxWidgets-2.8.6.exe which would install
wxWidgets like all other typical windows installers to your hard drive.
Note that it will also install all associated help files and appropiate
documentation along with the source.  Please take note however that the
installation doesn't set any environment variables for you, which you must
do yourself, and i will deal with that a little later.
If you choose to download the WXAll zip source files and install and build
it yourself, then please pay close attention as we have really come to the
meat of the subject. Even for those of you who downloaded the .exe binary, 
pleas do not skip the following part of the tutorial as knowledge on
building your sample and demo apps found in the distribution file is heavily 
reliant on what you've learnt from hereon.
WXWidgets building tools.
Along with the zipped source distribution of wxWidgets, You'll need one of
the following tools to build and install wxWidgets onto your hard drive.
However, if you want different variants of the windows flavored wxWidgets on 
your pc, there is nothing to stop you from obtaining all of the tools
mentioned here.
1.  VCExpress accompanied by the windows platform SDk which you can obtain
freely from the Microsoft website. (note: If you have any other version of 
the MSVC other than the VCExpress, then you need not worry about the
Platform SDK as these are fully provided with it's own C++ Compilation
tools).
2. The older versions of the borland ide and compiler which you can obtain 
from the Borland site (Note that the download sites for these are rather
obscure and the best way to pinpoint their location is by doing a search on 
google or your favorite search engine).
3.  MinGW which you can obtain from the MinGW site, http://www.mingw.org
With MinGW, you can choose to compile in a unix-like environment by
obtaining the following additional tools:
i.  MSYS, a unix style shell command utility which you can locate at the
MinGW site.
ii.  Cygwin,
http://www.cygwin.org
which actually comes with it's own gcc compilers.
If you compiled and build wxWidgets with Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0, 7.0, 7.1 or 8.0, You'll get a VC build of wxWidgets. If you install and build it 
with borland and/or MinGW on the other hand, you'll get a BCC and a GCC
build respectively.
Caution:  Visual Studio 7.0 has been found to be very buggy when used to
build wxWidgets. I wouldn't recommend this particular version but 6.0, 7.1 or 8.0 instead. The older versions of the GCC compiler has also been shown 
not to have work well.  My recommendation is for you to download the most
current version.
Going the VC way.
Having obtained wxWidgets and your building tools of choice, it is now time 
for us to start building your WxWidgets sources.  Here are the detailed
steps.
1. Unzip your source distribution of wxWidgets to a convenient location on 
your hard drive.  I would typically unzip mine to c:\wxWidgets-2.8.6.  In
all cases, the path folder has already been set for you, and it is just a
matter of choosing the drive that is most convenient to you.  I have also
deleted the unnecessary version number found in the path, and since it still 
works, c:\wx would save you lots of memory loss time.
2. Having unzipped your files into the set folder, the folder tree of your 
wx distribution would now typically look like this:
main folder: c:\wx
subfolders:
art,
build,
contrib,
demos,
distrib,
docs,
include,
lib,
locale,
misc,
samples,
src
and a few more which are of no concern to us at this stage.
The most important subdirectory you have to concern yourself with for now is the build directory. If you browse it, you will find the necessary folders which will influence your build of wxWidgets. Concentrate on the msw folder 
for now.
3.  Browse the msw folder. you will find a file called config.vc.  This is
typically a configure file or tool that you can configure to achieve a VC++ 
build of wxWidgets which is to your liking.  Open up the file by changing
it's extension to, for example, config.vc.txt.  You might get a message
telling you that by changing a file extension, you will render it unusable
or some such. Ignore it. You can now open the file with notepad and access 
it's contents.  Change the configurable flags in the file to suit your
needs.
For example, set unicode build of wxWidgets to 1 if you want a unicode
build, 0 for ascii.  Set the ODBC library flag to 1 if you want to include
the ODBC library in your build, set it to 0 for no.  Just pay attention to
any of the default settings and tweak as and when you need. Also take note that a dynamic build will produce DLLS and a static build will result in Lib or library files which you would need to link to your apps. Also take note 
of the debug or release versions of the wxWidgets that is possible for you
to build. Once you are satisfied with your configuration, save the file and close. don't forget to rename the file back to makefile.vc. If you want to refine your vc build. you can do so by opening the wx_setup.h file found in the include folder. Follow the same steps as above to access and configure 
that file.
4.Set up the environment path.  Although there are some tools to help with
this, I have found that setting up the environment path by hand is the most 
safest and surest way of doing it.  Here are the steps.
I. Set your WXWIN path by first going to your my computer selection on your desktop. Press your right context menu key to bring up the various submenu 
selections.  Arrow up once to properties where you'll land on the general
tab of the properties pages.  Arrow right to advanced, then tab until you
hear the tab button being announced.  Press the space bar to get into the
environment page. You will land on the user environment list, tab again to 
new and press the space bar. the first edit field you'll encounter is the
user variable. type in "WXWIN" without the quotation marks. Tab once more, 
now to the value edit field, type in the location of your wx folder, in my
case, c:\wx.  Press ok.
II.  Now tab to the system variable list.  Choose path with the down arrow
key, then tab to the I for edit button.  Press the space bar and you'll be
presented with an edit field with a line of system variable paths separated 
by semicolons.  Check if your Visual studio and your platform SDK bin
directories are there.  This is especially important if you are building
with VCExpress. If not, type them at the end of the list like this. First 
put a semicolon after your last entry, then add the path to the mentioned
bin directories, typically ;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK r2\Bin. Please note that if you are using VCExpress, then the sdk bin directory must 
come after the VCExpress directory.  Press ok 3 times.  The paths are now
set.
Building
After all the priliminary ground work, it is now time to get building. Open 
the command prompt.  CD to the folder where vcvars32.bat (if you are using
VC++8.0 other than the express version), is located, and setenv.cmd (if
VC++you
are using VC++Express with the platform SDK), is located. Typically, these would be %program files\microsoft Platform SDK r2% for setenv.cmd, %program 
files\microsoft visual studio8\tools\bin for vcvars32.bat.  These will set
up the appropriate environments to build your wxWidgets distribution.  You
could copy both files to your C:\ drive if it helps, which i personally have 
done.  If everything went well, if all instructions were observed, you can
now have a working version of wxWidgets by issuing the following commands.
CD c:\
Vcvars32.bat (if you copied this file there.)  A message will tell you in
essence that the microsoft visual studio tools environment has been set.
now cd to c:\wx\build\msw. When the prompt confirms your presence in there, type nmake /f makefile.vc build=optimise. Your build will now begin. There 
will be lots of output which you can ignore, unless the debugger stops
midway with some fatal error warnings.  But if you have followed the
instructions above, you'll find that your source will compile and build
fine. The same will occur if you used setenv.cmd, except that this time, it 
will set the platform SDK environment.
A successful build of a unicode-debug version of wxWidgets will yield you a 
directory in the msw directory tree called VC_mswud which will be full of
obj files that you can clean using the clean command.  Also, if you browse
the lib directory, another VC_mswud directory of lib files would have been
created for you. These are the runtime libraries that are issential for you 
to link against your wxWidgets built apps. To test if your build works
propperly, CD to the sample directory like this:
cd c:\wx\samples\access, for example, then issue the makefile command.  If
it builds correctly, then congratulations, you have a working wxWidgets
distribution.
If you have any questions, feell free to ask.  The borland and the MinGW
build tutorials will follow in the next 2 to 3 days, depending on my work
schedule.  All thoughts on this little tutorial are welcomed.  Cheers!

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