Pidgin
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Version 108 (modified by John Bailey, 14 years ago) (diff)

Comment out the build environment fetcher script stuff for now since it's outdated.

Pidgin for Windows Build Instructions

Note: The instructions for versions prior to 2.7.0 are found here.

Set up your build environment

  1. Install the ​Cygwin Bash shell. Also make sure you install bash, bzip2, coreutils, libiconv, gawk, grep, gzip, make, monotone, patch, sed, tar, unzip, wget, and zip (several of these are selected by default, those in bold are not).
    You may prefer to use the native Windows monotone binary (available ​here), and/or ​MSYS instead of Cygwin.
  1. The following instructions were written under the assumption that the Pidgin source will be extracted or checked out into $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version> and that you install all of Pidgin's build dependencies under $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev (the point being that the pidgin source root and win32-dev directories should be on the same level). Some users may find the instructions for customizing their build environment useful.

You don't have to actually define an environment variable called PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT, it is simply used here as a placeholder.

Note: You should avoid using a $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT path that contains spaces as that can cause unnecessary complications.

People are sometimes confused about the directory structure, so here is an example structure after all the dependencies have been installed ($PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT is c:\devel\pidgin-devel in this example): 

c:\devel\pidgin-devel
(The following is the source tree root, containing config.h.mingw and libpurple.)
c:\devel\pidgin-devel\pidgin-<version>
c:\devel\pidgin-devel\win32-dev
(If the following file is present, your structure is probably correct.)
c:\devel\pidgin-devel\win32-dev\gtk_2_0-2.14\include\libintl.h
  1. Install the MinGW "GCC Version 4" packages from the ​MinGW site.
  • There isn't currently an installer for these; the following instructions are distilled from the MinGW manual instructions ​here
  • Create a win32-dev/mingw directory and download the following into it:
  • Extract all of the above downloaded files directly into the win32-dev/mingw directory.
  • You will need to set MinGW's bin directory before Cygwin's in your PATH.
    For Example (You can add the following to your ~/.bashrc file (create the file if it doesn't exist yet)): 
      export PATH=/cygdrive/c/devel/pidgin-devel/win32-dev/mingw/bin:$PATH

Install Pidgin's build dependencies

GTK+

Pidgin depends on GTK+ 2.14.7 (newer runtime versions can be used). The GTK+ All-in-one bundle contains all of GTK+'s dependencies in one zip file. Download ​gtk+-bundle_2.14.7-20090119_win32.zip into $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/gtk_2_0-2.14.
Visit the ​GTK+ website for official binary and source releases.

gettext

You'll need gettext to compile translations. Download ​gettext-tools-0.17.zip and ​gettext-runtime-0.17-1.zip. Extract both to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/gettext-0.17.

Libxml2

Download and extract ​libxml2-dev_2.7.4-1_win32.zip to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/libxml2-2.7.4.
Download and extract ​libxml2_2.7.4-1_win32.zip to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/libxml2-2.7.4 (the same directory as the -dev package above).

Perl 5.10

Install Perl 5.10 (I use ​ActivePerl), and make sure it is in your PATH. If you don't have Perl in your PATH, you will need to override the PERL variable in your pidgin/local.mak file. You will also need to install perl_5-10-0.tar.gz under $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev (Containing headers and import lib for mingw gcc).

Tcl 8.4.5

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

GtkSpell

Enchant

Mozilla NSS

SILC Toolkit

Download and extract silc-toolkit-1.1.8.tar.gz to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev.

Meanwhile

Download and extract meanwhile-1.0.2_daa2-win32.zip to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev.

Bonjour SDK

Download the Bonjour SDK for Windows from ​the Apple developer website and install it to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/Bonjour_SDK.

Note: it may happen that Bonjour SDK installs to its default location (Program Files\Bonjour SDK) regardless what you have specified during install. In that case simply copy everything from Program Files\Bonjour SDK to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/Bonjour_SDK.

Cyrus SASL

Download and extract cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-daa1.zip to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev.
(this also contains the MIT GSSAPI module)

Intltool

Download and extract ​intltool_0.40.4-1_win32.zip to $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/win32-dev/intltool_0.40.4-1_win32

Get the Pidgin source code

The source for Pidgin 2.7.1 is available ​here (use the latest release if this isn't updated yet).

The development source is available via monotone. See UsingPidginMonotone for more information.

Build Pidgin

Run the following: 

cd $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version>
make -f Makefile.mingw install

Now just wait and let your compiler do its thing. When finished, Pidgin will be in $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version>/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):
  • Now you can actually build the installer.
    There are 2 different installers, an "Offline" installer that includes all dependencies (except spellchecking dictionaries) and the debug symbols and an "Online" installer that includes only Pidgin itself and will download the various dependencies if necessary. The Makefile.mingw targets for these are installer_offline, and installer respectively. To build both, use the installers target. 
    cd $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version>
make -f Makefile.mingw installers
    When it finishes, your installer(s) should be in $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version>/.

Customizing the Build Environment

Most people will find that the standard build environment directory is completely adequate. It is, however, possible to override the locations of the various dependencies and target directories. This is often useful to test against a development version of a library dependency or to override compiler flags.

This done is by overriding the various Makefile variables in a local.mak file in the $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin-<version> directory. This file does not exist by default.

Most of the variables that can be overridden with this method are defined in the libpurple/win32/global.mak file. For example, to install Pidgin over c:\Program Files\Pidgin instead of $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin/win32-install-dir, create a $PIDGIN_DEV_ROOT/pidgin/local.mak containing: 

 #Override the install location
 PIDGIN_INSTALL_DIR = /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/Pidgin
 PURPLE_INSTALL_DIR = /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/Pidgin

One nice use of the local.mak file is for cross compiling, there is an additional example in the section below.

Debugging

There is a quite good Just In Time debugger for MinGW: ​drmingw. You can download it here.
There is also a version of gdb available from MinGW, if you prefer.

Cross Compiling

It is quite easy to cross compile Pidgin for Windows on a Linux machine.

To begin, you'll need to install MinGW. On Debian/Ubuntu?, this involves installing packages mingw32, mingw32-binutils, and mingw32-runtime. On other distributions, the packages may be named differently.

Set up a build environment as described above, skipping steps 1 and 3.

Create a local.mak file in the source directory root to override the Makefile variables - mine looks like this: 

SHELL := /bin/bash
CC := /usr/bin/i586-mingw32msvc-cc
GMSGFMT := msgfmt
MAKENSIS := /usr/bin/makensis
MAKENSISOPT := -
WINDRES := /usr/bin/i586-mingw32msvc-windres
STRIP := /usr/bin/i586-mingw32msvc-strip
INTLTOOL_MERGE := /usr/bin/intltool-merge

INCLUDE_PATHS := -I$(PIDGIN_TREE_TOP)/../win32-dev/w32api/include
LIB_PATHS := -L$(PIDGIN_TREE_TOP)/../win32-dev/w32api/lib

If your distribution doesn't include a recent enough win32api, you can download it from the ​MinGW site, extract it into your win32-dev directory, and override the INCLUDE_PATHS and LIB_PATHS variables in your local.mak as I have done.

NSIS version 2.46 or greater is required to cross-compile. If compiling NSIS from source, the ​scons package is a dependency. This can usually be installed through your linux distribution's package archive. An example of how to install the NSIS package is given below (Assuming use of the NSIS 2.46 version):

.tar.bz2 file contains latest source
.zip file contains libraries 

mkdir nsis; cd nsis
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nsis/nsis-2.46-src.tar.bz2?download 
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nsis/nsis-2.46.zip?download
tar -jxvf nsis-2.46-src.tar.bz2
cd nsis-2.46
scons SKIPSTUBS=all SKIPPLUGINS=all SKIPUTILS=all SKIPMISC=all NSIS_CONFIG_CONST_DATA_PATH=no
sudo scons install-compiler
cd ..
sudo unzip nsis-2.46 -d /usr/local/share
sudo mv /usr/local/share/nsis-2.46/ /usr/local/share/nsis

If following the above instructions, the local.mak file (listed above) should be modified

MAKENSIS := /usr/local/bin/makensis

Once this is all set up, you should be able to follow the building instructions above.

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