Pidgin for Windows Build Instructions

Set up your build environment

The easy way

1. Install the ​Cygwin Bash shell. Make sure to select Unix file mode during setup. Also make sure you install bash, bzip2, coreutils, gawk, grep, gzip, make, patch, sed, monotone, tar, unzip, and wget (several of these are selected by default).
   You may prefer to use the native Windows monotone binary available ​here.

2. Download the ​Build Environment Fetcher script. Follow the instructions on the website to fetch and install most of the needed build dependencies. The script can fetch Gaim's source code from either Subversion or a source distribution; you will be prompted to choose which you'd like to use.
   Note that this script is sometimes out of date, in which case you will need to perform some of the manual steps in addition.

3. Skip the The manual way, Install Pidgin's build dependencies, and Get the Pidgin source code sections and go straight to Build Pidgin.

The manual way

1. Install the ​Cygwin Bash shell. Make sure to select Unix file mode during setup. Also make sure you install bash, bzip2, coreutils, gawk, grep, gzip, make, patch, sed, monotone, tar, unzip, and wget (several of these are selected by default).
   You may prefer to use the native Windows monotone binary available ​here.

2. Install the MinGW "current" packages from the ​MinGW site.
   The easiest way to install these is to use the MinGW Installer linked to from the main site.
   Specifically, you will need gcc-core 3.4.2, binutils 2.15.91, mingw-runtime 3.9 and win32api 3.7 (or newer).
   You will need to set MinGW's bin directory before Cygwin's in your PATH.
   For Example (You can add the following to ~/.bash_login):

     export PATH=/cygdrive/c/MinGW/bin:$PATH
   

   You do not want to use any of Cygwin's build tools, with one exception; you need to use Cygwin's make utility. If typing which make produces MinGW's make utility, then just rename the make.exe in the MinGW bin directory to something else so that cygwin's make utility will be used instead. This shouldn't be a problem with recent versions of MinGW.

3. The following instructions were written under the assumption that you checkout Pidgin from monotone to ~/pidgin and that you install all of Pidgin's build dependencies under ~/win32-dev (the point being that the pidgin and win32-dev directories should be on the same level).
   This can be overridden by creating a local.mak file in the ~/pidgin directory and overriding the various Makefile variables.
   TODO: post example local.mak

Install Pidgin's build dependencies

GTK+

Pidgin depends on GTK+ 2.6.10 (newer runtime versions can be used, but building against newer headers will prevent Win98/ME compatibility). For your convenience, we have included all of GTK's dependencies in one tarball. Extract ​gtk-dev-2.6.10-rev-a.tar.gz within ~/win32-dev.
If you wish to run Pidgin from the win32-install-dir directory once it is built, you will need to make sure that you have installed the GTK+ runtime, and make sure that its bin dir is in your PATH.
Visit the ​GTK+ website for official binary and source releases.

Libxml2

Download and extract libxml2-2.6.24.tar.gz to win32-dev.

Perl 5.8

Install Perl 5.8 for Windows (I use ​ActivePerl), to C:\Perl. If you install Perl anywhere else, you will need to override the PERL and EXTUTILS variables in your pidgin/local.mak file. You will also need to install perl582.tar.gz under ~/win32-dev (Containing headers and import lib for mingw gcc).

Tcl 8.4.5

Download and extract tcl-8.4.5.tar.gz to win32-dev

GtkSpell / Aspell

• Download the following development packages for GtkSpell and Aspell, and extract them under win32-dev:
  • ​aspell-dev-0-50-3-3.zip
  • gtkspell-2.0.6.tar.gz

Mozilla NSS

• Download and unzip the following under ~/win32-dev (make sure you chmod 755 all the unzipped binaries):
  • ​Network Security Services (NSS)
  • ​Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR)

SILC Toolkit

Download and extract silc-toolkit-1.0.2.tar.gz to win32-dev.

Meanwhile

Download and extract ​meanwhile-1.0.2-win32.zip to win32-dev.

Get the Pidgin source code

The source for Pidgin 2.0.0beta6 is available ​here.
The development source is available via monotone. See UsingPidginMonotone for more information.

Build Pidgin

Run the following:

$ cd ~/pidgin
$ make -f Makefile.mingw install

Now just wait and let your compiler do its thing. When finished, Pidgin will be in ~/pidgin/win32-install-dir.

Build the Pidgin Installer

• If you want to build the Pidgin installer, do the following (skip to the make command below if you chose to use the Build Environment Fetcher):
  • Download and install ​NSIS. Include NSIS to your PATH. For info on the NSIS installer, visit the ​NSIS website.
  • Download ​gtk-2.10.11-rev-a-installer.tar.gz and extract it to ~/ (or whichever directory you have the pidgin dir in). From within the new gtk_installer directory, run . build.sh (this builds the GTK+ runtime installer, which the Pidgin installer will include).
  • Download pidgin-inst-deps.tar.gz and extract under ~/win32-dev.
• Now you can actually build the installer.
  There are 3 different installers: "Normal" (with GTK+), "No GTK+" and "Debug". The Makefile targets for these are installer, installer_nogtk, and installer_debug respectively. To build all 3, use the installers target.

  $ cd ~/pidgin
  $ make -f Makefile.mingw installers
  

Debugging

There is a quite good Just In Time debugger for MinGW: ​drmingw. You can download it here.
You can also use gdb is available from MinGW.