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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 mingw-w64-i686-make mingw-w64-i686-pkg-config mingw-w64-i686-vala mingw-w64-i686-SDL_image 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. But, perl is still needed “for def-keys and msgtypes generation”
Download and extract CrossFire source to e.g. c:\cfsource.rxxxxx.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/crossfire/files/crossfire-client/
Install latest CMake 32-bit:
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?)
(I use “.”, but I don't know if it makes any difference at all)
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 the contents of C:\cfbuild\ and try again.
Compile:
Open msys32 32-bit shell (“MSYS2 MinGW 32-bit” in the Start Menu)
cd /c/cfbuild/
run mingw32-make.exe
Create release package:
Run 'mingw32-make install'
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 sound server has been merged to main executable since r21700
Copy directory cfbuild\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 release\share\crossfire-client\sounds\
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 <del>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”. 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> <del>The sound server will fail to spawn if you do not get the glib helper program. This is a Windows-specific thing.</del> Sawning the sound server is no longer an issue since r21700, when it was merged into the main binary. 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 libmikmod-3.dll (skipping this doesn't seem to break anything, but the client still looks for it) libnghttp2-14.dll libopenal-1.dll (skipping this doesn't seem to break anything, but the client still looks for it) libpango-1.0-0.dll libpangocairo-1.0-0.dll libpangoft2-1.0-0.dll libpangowin32-1.0-0.dll libpcre-1.dll (skipping this doesn't seem to break anything, but the client still looks for it) 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:<del>
Since r21700, these dlls go with all the others.
libmad-0.dll
libSDL_mixer-1-2-0.dll
libogg-0.dll
libvorbis-0.dll
libvorbisfile-3.dll
<del>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
Get the glib helper program from C:\msys32\mingw32\bin\gspawn-win32-helper-console.exe, and copy it to release\ Not needed since r21700
Pull the release\ folder to another machine, and run.
Weep because everything's on fire:
There are various non-fatal build warnings: