Difference between revisions of "HowTo compile with Visual Studio"

Revision as of 13:38, 8 March 2009

Requirements for compiling aMule for Windows using Visual Studio

You will need the following packages:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (called "VS") - either the free Express Edition or the commercial edition
• Windows port of wxWidgets library (known as wxMSW) -> Download (2.8.9) (There is a bug in 2.8.9 which causes black background for toolbar images with 16bit desktop colour depth. In that case use 2.8.8 or 2.8 SVN. )
• Crypto++ library -> Download(5.5.2)
• zlib compression library is already included in wxMSW
• aMule 2.2.3 source or latest SVN source tarball -> Download aMule

Also, 1100MB free space on your hard disk (around 40MB to download the above packages and the rest for temporary compilation files and installations. The amount of space needed will largely depend on the configuration flags you use).

As a reference, the whole compilation process will take around 20 min on a medium-high resourced computer.

Unpacking the sources

• Create a root folder. You can name it whatever you want. In this example it is called "aMule".
• Unpack wxMSW to "aMule\wxWidgets" (no intermediate subfolder).
• Unpack cryptopp to "aMule\cryptopp" (no intermediate subfolder).
• Unpack aMule to "aMule\trunk" (no intermediate subfolder). This folder can be named as you like, the 2 library folders must have exact the names from above, or the project won't load.

Preparing the library projects

• Open "aMule\wxWidgets\build\msw\wx.dsw" in VS. It asks, if it should convert the project. Answer "Yes to all".
• Close VS, saving the changes.

Selecting the solution

1. "aMule-MSVCE-ExtLibs.sln" builds wxWidgets and cryptopp into a single big lib "libext.lib".
2. "aMule-MSVCE.sln" builds aMule (including aMule's internal libs) and aMule's tools. That way the (now flat) aMule solution is not cluttered with all the wxWidgets libs, and a Clean Solution won't clean the wxWidgets build (which usually is not the intention). These solutions can be used both with the express edition and with the commercial VS edition.
3. "aMule-MSVC.sln" works only with the commercial edition of VS. This solution includes everything - aMule, tools, external libs, organized in folders (which the express edition does not allow). Usage of this solution is not recommended for newer versions of aMule.

Compiling the external libraries

• Open the aMule solution "aMule\trunk\MSVC Solution\aMule-MSVCE-ExtLibs.sln" in VS.
• In the toolbar set the Solution Configuration to Debug or Release (whatever you prefer) and the Solution Platform to Win32.
• Debug build:
• In the solution explorer open properties of cryptlib.
• In Configuration Properties/C-C++/Code Generation change Runtime Library to Multithreaded Debug DLL (/MDd).
• Release build:
• In the solution explorer open properties of all projects except buildlibext.
• In Configuration Properties/C-C++/Code Generation change Runtime Library to Multithreaded (/MT).
• Hit F7.
• If everything was fine, load "aMule\trunk\MSVC Solution\aMule-MSVCE.sln" to continue.

Compiling aMule

Select Build/Build Solution or just hit F7 and lean back.

If you get errors:

error in Scanner.cpp

change

b->yy_is_interactive = 0;
// b->yy_is_interactive = file ? (isatty( fileno(file) ) > 0) : 0;

error accessing something.pdb

Sometimes VS stumbles over it's own feet. Just delete the offending pdb and try again.

Running

To run aMule from VS, right-click on aMule and Set as StartUp project. Then hit F5.

aMule's configuration will be stored in your document folder in "AppData\Roaming\aMule" (under Vista).

Building aMule with GeoIP support

The MaxMind GeoIP library can detect the country an IP adress comes from. aMule uses this information to display a little country flag for each source or ed2k server. Since this is an external library it is disabled by default. This is how to enable it (only available in the SVN version):

Download the free GeoIP C library 1.4.6 (older versions don't work!). From the folder libGeoIP take "GeoIP.h" and "GeoIP.c" and put them into "MSVC Solution\libs\libGeoIP" (replacing the dummy files that may be there).

Rebuild aMule. That's it. :-)

The free GeoIP country database will be downloaded automatically on startup.