View source for Install (MinGW)

This document contains instructions for building OpenBabel (OB) on Windows with [http://www.mingw.org/ MinGW]. The resulting DLL (libopenbabel-3.dll) may be linked directly from Windows applications compiled with MinGW, so there is no need to deal with (import) libraries created with Microsoft Visual C++. This is especially useful if your existing software uses a GNU make based build system. Binaries created with MinGW are native and do not need an emulation layer, such as [http://www.cygwin.com/ Cygwin].

Date: March 31, 2009, Tested with OB 2.1.1 and 2.2.1 on Windows Vista.

== Preliminaries: ==
OB requires libxml2; libxml can be found [http://xmlsoft.org/, here]. Specifically, this requires you to edit the xml2-config script. I recommend you directly link a test application against libxml2.dll and insert the respective -I and -L flags into xml2-config. The relevant section of mine looks like this:
<pre>
    --cflags)
        echo -I/home/libxml2-2.7.3.win32/include/libxml -I/home/libxml2-2.7.3.win32/include
</pre>
and 
<pre>
    --libs)
        echo /c/Windows/System32/libxml2.dll -liconv -lm -Wl,-s -lwsock32 -liberty
</pre>

OB requires zlib; zlib can be found [http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm here]. Make sure OB can find the header files and DLL during configuration by prior adding the respective directories to your $PATH environment variable.

[http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started Install] current Msys and MinGW version. Unpack OB source, start Msys and change to OB directory. '''Warning:''' I experienced "object name conflicts" during compilation when the $PATH contained the windows\system32 directory at the beginning.

== Build OB 2.1.1: ==
<pre>
./configure
</pre>
You may want to leave out boost and/or loading of dynamic modules: <code>./configure --without-boost --disable-dynamic-modules</code>.
<pre>
cd src/formats/inchi
make
cd ../../../tools
</pre>

Edit the Makefile and exchange the following lines 

<pre>
babel_DEPENDENCIES = ../src/libopenbabel.la
babel_LDADD = ../src/libopenbabel.la
</pre>

with 

<pre>
babel_DEPENDENCIES = ../src/libopenbabel.la $(formats_objects)
babel_LDADD = ../src/libopenbabel.la $(formats_objects)
</pre>

Repeat the editing for the rest of the executables if you need more than babel.exe. Then continue to build and install OB. The tools as well as the DLL will be placed in /local/bin (C:\Msys\local\bin). 

<pre>
cd ..
make
make install
</pre>

== Build OB 2.2.1: ==
[http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=241304 Update] the g++ compiler to version 4 (g++-sjlj, see also the [http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/gcc-4.2.1-sjlj-2-release_notes.txt?use_mirror=freefr release notes]). Unpack gcc-g++-4.2.1-sjlj-2.tar.gz and gcc-core-4.2.1-sjlj-2.tar.gz in your MinGW root directory

<pre>
./configure CXX=g++-sjlj
</pre>
You may want to leave out boost and/or loading of dynamic modules by adding this to the configure command: <code>--without-boost --disable-dynamic-modules</code>.
<pre>
make
</pre>
Compilation of libopenbabel-3.dll breaks due to missing zlib support. You may manually fix this by repeating the last failed command and adding the file path to <code>zlib.dll</code>. 

[[Category:Installation]]

--[[User:Amaunz|Amaunz]] 07:18, 31 March 2009 (PDT)