Throughout 2019 and 2020, I've been able to build the GTK2 client on Windows, with relatively good success, except that everything explodes when I take it out of the build environment.

to various Windows build instructions:

Release Guide -> Windows (2014 or older)

CaveSomething's CMake instructions (2010 or older)

Server compiling with Visual Studio 6 (contains passing references to gtk client builds)

MinGW and CMake instructions from ~2018 (External on xob.kapsi.fi/~makegho)

loosely based on the makegho 2018 instructions:

These instructions assume a fresh, clean 32-bit windows 10 machine.

Install compiler tools:

Go to http://www.msys2.org/

Download and run latest i686 installer (msys2-i686-20190524.exe)

Start an msys2 32-bit shell (“MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit” in the start menu) and type:

pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-gcc 
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-make
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-pkg-config
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-vala
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-SDL_image
pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-SDL_mixer

Alternatively, do a oneliner:

pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-gcc pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-make pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-pkg-config pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-vala pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-SDL_image pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-SDL_mixer

Add c:\msys32\mingw32\bin to path

Install PERL:

http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html

Download portable 32 bit edition

Extract to C:\perl

Add C:\perl\perl\bin to path.

Note that this can cause some issues, especially if CMake tries to use perl-supplied components instead of those from MSYS/MinGW

Download and extract CrossFire source to e.g. c:\cfsource.rxxxxx.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/crossfire/files/crossfire-client/

Install latest CMake 32-bit:

https://cmake.org/download/

Run CMake gui:

Set source code directory, e.g. c:/cfsource.rxxxxx

Set binary directory, e.g. c:/cfbuild

Click 'Configure' and choose 'MinGW Makefiles'

Change CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to something reasonable

(C:\Program Files (x86)\… is probably read only).

(Nothing seems to be put in this folder anyway?)

If CMake finds wrong include directories, e.g. from Visual Studio, change them manually to 'C:\msys32\mingw32\include'

If CMake fails near a pkgconfig or gtk/gio item, check to make sure that it hasn’t defaulted the PKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE to a perl directory. If so, revert it to the msys32 one, probably C:\msys32\mingw32\bin\pkg-config.exe

Click “Configure” again, hope no errors occur.

Once it finally doesn’t have warnings or errors, Click 'generate'.

If configuring goes wrong, delete directory c:\cfbuild\CMakeFiles and try again.

Compile:

Open msys32 32-bit shell (“MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit” in the Start Menu)

Go to c:\cfbuild

run mingw32-make.exe

Create release package:

Run 'mingw32-make install', though it doesn't seem to do much.

Make directory 'release', somewhere in your system

Copy \cfbuild\bin\crossfire-client-gtk2.exe to release\

Create dir release\bin, and copy \cfbuild\bin\cfsndserv.exe to it

Copy directory 'share' to release\

At this point, the client should run more or less fine, at least in your dev environment. Now we need to prep it so it can be run on other systems (but this is the broken part).

In release, create a folder called “lib”, and copy “gdk-pixbuf-2.0” and “gtk-2.0” from “C:\msys32\mingw32\lib”. This fixes some xpm warnings, and makes a few GUI icons render correctly, apparently a very few gui elements are xpm? Fetch “msys32\mingw32\share\themes” and place it in “release\share\”. This fixes an issue that breaks the GTK theme.

Find sounds from somewhere, and put them in share\

Find the DLLs, and put them in release\

Most of the DLLs can be found in c:\msys32\bin. Currently includes:

libatk-1.0-0.dll
libbrotlicommon.dll
libbrotlidec.dll
libbz2-1.dll
libcairo-2.dll
libcrypto-1_1.dll
libcurl-4.dll
libdatrie-1.dll
libexpat-1.dll
libffi-6.dll
libfontconfig-1.dll
libfreetype-6.dll
libfribidi-0.dll
libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll
libgdk-win32-2.0-0.dll
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0-0.dll Adding this causes a deluge of warnings about XPM not being supported. To fix, in release, create a folder called “lib”, and copy “gdk-pixbuf-2.0” and “gtk-2.0” from “C:\msys32\mingw32\lib”. <del>This fixes some xpm warnings, and makes a few GUI icons render correctly, apparently a very few gui elements are xpm?</del>
libgio-2.0-0.dll
libglib-2.0-0.dll <del>Adding this causes the sound server to fail to spawn, message "Could not spawn sound server: Failed to execute helper program (Invalid argument)" Skip for now, and it will work in the dev enrions.</del> The sound server will fail to spawn if you do not get the glib helper program. This is a Windows-specific thing.
libgmodule-2.0-0.dll
libgobject-2.0-0.dll
libgraphite2.dll
libgtk-win32-2.0-0.dll Adding this breaks the GTK theme. Fetch “msys32\mingw32\share\themes” and place it in “release\share\”. This only works if you have also copied the above items into "lib"
libharfbuzz-0.dll
libiconv-2.dll
libidn2-0.dll
libintl-8.dll
libnghttp2-14.dll
libpango-1.0-0.dll
libpangocairo-1.0-0.dll
libpangoft2-1.0-0.dll
libpangowin32-1.0-0.dll
libpcre-1.dll
libpixman-1-0.dll
libpng16-16.dll
libpsl-5.dll
libssl-1_1.dll
libstdc++-6.dll
libthai-0.dll
libunistring-2.dll
libwinpthread-1.dll
SDL.dll
zlib1.dll

These DLLs go in release\bin\, since they are used by the sound server:

libmad-0.dll
libSDL_mixer-1-2-0.dll
libogg-0.dll
libvorbis-0.dll
libvorbisfile-3.dll

It works to put them in release\, but the sound server checks for them in .\, so it helps if they're in the same folder as cfsndserv.exe

At this point, the client runs in your dev environs, no warnings, sound works, etc, as long as you did not copy libglib.

Get the glib helper program from C:\msys32\mingw32\bin\gspawn-win32-helper-console.exe, and copy it to release\

Pull the release\ folder to another machine, and run.

It now complains that libglib is missing. Copy it as well. Sound is now broken. when you launch, there's now warnings and the themes are broken again.

Weep because everything's on fire.

Find the rest of the DLLs from the 1.72.0 release. Find any missing DLLs from official runtime distributions. If DLLs are still missing, shed some tears. I had to rename libpng16_16.dll to libpng14_14.dll. I have no idea what could have required libpng14, and libpng14 has serious vulnerabilities too. (Renaming DLLs is not safe either.)