win32/Readme.txt

                             Windows port
                             ------------

This directory contains the files required to build this software on the
native Windows platform.

As a rule of thumb, the root of this directory contains files needed
to build the library using the command-line tools, while various
subdirectories contain project files for various IDEs.


  1. Building from the command-line
  =================================

This is the easiest, preferred and currently supported method. 

In order to build from the command-line you need to make sure that
your compiler works from the command line. This is not always the
case, often the required environment variables are missing. If you are
not sure, test if this works first. If it doesn't, you will first have
to configure your compiler suite to run from the command-line - please
refer to your compiler's documentation regarding that.

The first thing you want to do is configure the source. You can have
the configuration script do this automatically for you. The
configuration script is written in JScript, a Microsoft's
implementation of the ECMA scripting language. Almost every Windows
machine can execute this through the Windows Scripting Host. If your
system lacks the ability to execute JScript for some reason, you must
perform the configuration manually.

The second step is compiling the source and, optionally, installing it
to the location of your choosing.


  1.1 Configuring the source automatically
  ----------------------------------------

The configuration script accepts numerous options. Some of these
affect features which will be available in the compiled software,
others affect the way the software is built and installed. To see a
full list of options supported by the configuration script, run

  cscript configure.js help

from the win32 subdirectory. The configuration script will present you
the options it accepts and give a biref explanation of these. In every
case you will have two sets of options. The first set is specific to
the software you are building and the second one is specific to the
Windows port.

Once you have decided which options suit you, run the script with that
options. Here is an example:

  cscript configure.js prefix=c:\opt include=c:\opt\include 
    lib=c:\opt\lib debug=yes

The previous example will configure the process to install the library
in c:\opt, use c:\opt\include and c:\opt\lib as additional search
paths for the compiler and the linker and build executables with debug
symbols.

Note: Please do not use path names which contain spaces. This will
fail. Allowing this would require me to put almost everything in the
Makefile in quotas and that looks quite ugly with my
syntax-highlighting engine. If you absolutely must use spaces in paths
send me an email and tell me why. If there are enough of you out there
who need this, or if a single one has a very good reason, I will
modify the Makefile to allow spaces in paths.


  1.2 (Not) Configuring the source manually
  -----------------------------------------

The manual configuration is pretty straightforward, but I would
suggest rather to get a JScript engine and let the configure script do
it for you. This process involves editing the apropriate Makefile to
suit your needs, as well as manually generating certain *.h files from
their *.h.in sources.

If you really have no idea what I am talking about and ask yourself
what in Gods name do I mean with '*.h files and their *.h.in sources',
then you really should do an automatic configuration. Which files must
be generated and what needs to be done with their sources in order to
generate them is something people who have built this software before
allready know. You will not find any explanations for that
here. Please configure the source manually only if you allready know
what you must do. Otherwise, you have the choice of either getting a
precompiled binary distribution, or performing the automatic
configuration.


  1.3 Compiling
  -------------

After the configuration stage has been completed, you want to build
the software. To do that, type

  nmake

in the win32 subdirectory.When the building completes, you will find
the executable files in win32\binaries directory.
 
You can install the software into the directory you specified to the
configure script during the configure stage by typing

  nmake install

That would be it, enjoy.


  2. Building with the IDE
  ========================

Each supported IDE has its project files placed in a subdirectory of
win32. If you use a particular IDE, you should be able to
instinctively recognise its project files. When you have found your
favourites, load them into the IDE and do whatever you would do with
any other project files. If you are a novice and puzzled about how to
use particular project files with a particular IDE, check for a readme
file in that IDEs subdirectory. I won't discuss any particular IDE
here, because I would like to keep this document as general as
possible, and there is also a chance that support exists for IDEs
which I have never seen.


March 2002, Igor Zlatkovic <igor@stud.fh-frankfurt.de>