docs/README.WIN32

File: docs/README.WIN32

Last updated: Oct 01, 2004 - Karl Schultz - kschultz@users.sourceforge.net

Quick Start

Unzip both ZIP files (MesaLib and MesaDemos) into the same directory.
The libs and demos build separately, so if you do not care about the
demos, you do not have to unzip that zip file.  But if you do, it does
need to be unzipped into the same directory as the lib zip file because
the demos depend on the libs.

The build system has been changed to use Microsoft Visual Studio project
workspaces and projects.  Makefiles are no longer shipped or supported, but
can be generated from the projects using Visual Studio.

The workspace and project files were created with Visual Studio 6, so that
they can be used with VS6 and so that they can also be imported into VS 7.

Details and Notes

- To build the Mesa libraries, open the Mesa.dsw workspace file
  in the top directory.  You will need to build at least one
  driver.  Currently, only the gdi and osmesa drivers are available.
  Select one or the other as the active project and build it.
  If you want glu, select the glu project as active and build that as well.

- Glut is no longer in the Mesa.dsw workspace.  It is now built in
  the demo workspace (see below).
  
- The build process will create a lib directory in the top directory 
  and will put the following files there as you build them:
	OPENGL32.LIB, GLU32.LIB, OSMESA32.LIB
	OPENGL32.DLL, GLU32.DLL, OSMESA32.DLL

- Some users have reported problems building glu with VS7 after importing
  and converting the VS6 project files.  The problem is caused by a custom
  build step that was put in place to work around a problem with VS6 not
  recognizing .cc files as C++ source files.  It appears that VS7 can be
  configured to recognize .cc files as C++ files and so it compiles these
  glu files with the default settings, and does not use settings that are
  required to compile the files correctly.  The easiest way to solve the
  problem is to remove the .cc files from the glu project.  This does not
  delete the files, but removes them from the project so that VS does not
  try to compile them at all.  This allows the custom build step to compile 
  the files with the proper settings.

- After building, you can copy the above DLL files to a place in your PATH
  such as $SystemRoot/SYSTEM32.  If you don't like putting things in a
  system directory, place them in the same directory as the executable(s).
  Be careful about accidentially overwriting files of the same name in
  the SYSTEM32 directory.

- Build the demos by opening the appropriate *.dsw file in the
  progs directory tree.  For example, to build the demos, use
  progs/demos/Windows/demos.dsw.  The Windows directory contains
  the workspace and all the projects for each demo program.  Each
  project places the executable in the same directory as its source
  code, which is required for some demos.

- The demo projects also copy the Mesa library DLL files from the lib
  directory into the same directory as the demo executables, so that
  the demos use the Mesa libs you just built.

- The DLL files are built so that the external entry points use the
  stdcall calling convention.

- Static LIB files are not built.  The LIB files that are built with
  are the linker import files associated with the DLL files.  

- The si-glu sources are used to build the GLU libs.  This was done
  mainly to get the better tessellator code.

- The Windows driver (in src/Windows) builds and runs at least at
  a minimal level.  I modified this driver to work with the new
  Mesa 4.0 code and driver architecture, but I did not do a great
  deal of optimization and testing.  There are many opportunities
  for optimization, many of which can be done by coding more specific
  paths for the rasterizers.  See src/osmesa/osmesa.c for some good
  examples.

- There is DirectDraw support in the Windows driver, updated by
  Daniel Slater.  You'll need to uncomment the #define DDRAW line
  in src/Windows/wmesadef.h and add ddraw.lib to the list of libraries.
  On some systems, you will acheive significantly higher framerates 
  with DirectDraw.

- Some of the more specialized code like FX drivers, stereo, and
  parallel support isn't compiled or tested.  I left much of this
  code alone, but it may need some work to get it 'turned on' again.

- No assembly code is compiled or assembled.  Again, this may need
  some work to turn it back on or use it again.

- To build "mangled" Mesa, add the preprocessor define USE_MGL_NAMESPACE
  to the project settings.  You will also need to edit src/mesa.def to change
  all the gl* symbols to mgl*.  Because this is easy to do with a global
  replace operation in a text editor, no additional mangled version of mesa.def
  is maintained or shipped.

If you have a Windows-related build problem or question, it is
probably better to direct it to me (kschultz@users.sourceforge.net),
rather than directly to the other Mesa developers.  I will help you
as much as I can.  I also monitor the Mesa mailing lists and will
answer questions in this area there as well.


Karl Schultz