building with MinGW

[brice rebsamen]

Hi

I've been struggling with that for several days already. I'd appreciate some help. I am quite new to developing under Windows!

I want to build BCI2000 v3.0. I don't have Microsoft Visual Studio. I spent hours downloading and installing the 30 days trial version of Borland C++ Builder (2010 I think), but it did not work for some reason. So I decided to go for MinGW.

I could not find the 3.X.X version. I got the 4.X.X version (mingw-get-inst-20100831.exe) and it took hours to install. However, BCI2000 complained about it, because gcc3.x.x is required to build the shipped QT version. Btw, it's confusing because MinGW v3 brings Gcc version 4.X ...

So I figured that I'd have to go with a standard dist of QT and GCC4. I got the QT sdk from Nokia/Trolltech. It gives the option to install MinGW as well, which is pretty neat.

With those installed, the path set, and a few minor fixes in the code, I managed to build BCI2000 in CodeBlocks.

However, when trying the test_executables.bat, it failed, complaining that it could not find MSVCP80.DLL and MSVCR80.DLL. Quite weird, because these are supposedly needed for apps built with visual studio (QT maybe?)...

Anyway, I found the DLLs (from my openoffice installation) and copied them in C:/Windows/System32. test_executables.bat could find the DLLs but then complained that some entry points could not be found in QtCore4.dll...

I proceeded to recompile QT from source with the MinGW compiler. It took hours but succeeded (although it required some deleting of some temp files, see http://lists.trolltech.com/pipermail/qt ... 13495.html)

Then I rebuilt BCI2000 and tested and got the same errors.

Now I am really out of ideas. Plus, as each step takes hours, I don't really feel like trying every possible idea that come to my mind.

Can anybody help please?
- What version of MinGW is supported/recommended/suggested and where to get it and how to install it?
- Same for QT
- Do I need to recompile QT?

etc...


Btw, I am sure there are some very good reason for it, but it's a pain to have to get the QT source from the SVN repo, and then get them again from Nokia.... Not mentioning to have to rebuild QT. I wish the linux port was ready

Regards

[gschalk]

Brice,

I apologize that you are experiencing problems with BCI2000. BCI2000 v3.0 is still beta, and we have not run the final compilation tests, but you should not have to go through these problems. Did you read the building instructions on:

http://www.bci2000.org/wiki/index.php/P ... ild_System

In either case, Juergen will get back to you about this shortly.

Gerv

[mellinger]

Brice,

first of all I need to apologize for all the effort you had to invest when trying to compile BCI2000 with gcc 4.x.x.
As you noted, Qt comes now with a 4.x.x version of gcc, which makes appropriate support a high priority for us. Right now, I am testing BCI2000 build environments for the upcoming release of BCI2000 version 3. Once this is done, you will be able to use Qt 4.x and its accompagnying gcc to build BCI2000, without recompiling Qt.

For now, I recommend that you download Visual Studio 2008 Express from http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/ and use this to build BCI2000.

Best regards,
Juergen

[brice rebsamen]

Thanks for the tip on visual studio express. I installed it and rebuilt BCI2000 successfully (within 2 hours !)

You may consider mentioning on the wiki that visual studio express is available freely and give a link. That would save lots of effort and time to all those who are new to development under windows.

Btw, I built the entire system successfully, except for the 3 python modules: unresolved external symbol __imp___Py_Dealloc, __imp___Py_NegativeRefcount, __imp___Py_RefTotal. Probably because my python environment is not set properly. I could not find building instructions for those modules on the BCPy2000 wiki page. Again, a few lines would be utterly helpful there.

Thanks for the quick reply to my problem!

[mellinger]

You may consider mentioning on the wiki that visual studio express is available freely and give a link. That would save lots of effort and time to all those who are new to development under windows.

We are actually mentioning Visual Studio Express on the wiki: http://www.bci2000.org/wiki/index.php/P ... vironments
I added the word "free" now to make it more clear.

Regarding the BCPy2000 modules: Due to linking problems, they cannot be built in debug mode. Release mode should work fine, though.