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MinGW specific

This page contains tips for building various components using MinGW for Windows

Prepare a working environment

  • Download and install MSYS2, set the installation folder to C:\msys64
  • Open MSYS2 terminal, and install the following packages:
pacman -Sy mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain           \
           mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake               \
           mingw-w64-x86_64-gdb                 \
           mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-python-pip  \
           mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-python      \
           git                                  \
           openssh                              \
           unzip
  • Next, still in the MSYS2 terminal, Add the /mingw64/bin to your ~/.bashrc and source it:
echo "export PATH=/mingw64/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc
  • If you choose to work with CMD, create a script with the following content, name it MinGW.bat and place it on your desktop:
@echo off
title [64 bit] MinGW CMD Shell
set PATH=C:\msys64\mingw64\bin;C:\msys64\usr\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=C:\Program Files\CodeLite;%PATH%
cmd

Building zlib

  • Setup a working environment as described above if you hadn't done this before
  • Open MSYS2 terminal, and type:
wget https://www.zlib.net/zlib1211.zip
unzip zlib1211.zip
cd zlib-1.2.11
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G"MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/root
mingw32-make.exe -j$(nproc) install

Building OpenSSL

git clone https://github.com/janbar/openssl-cmake.git
cd openssl-cmake
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake .. -G"MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/root
mingw32-make.exe -j$(nproc) install

Building libssh

Before we can get started:

git clone https://git.libssh.org/projects/libssh.git libssh-git
cd libssh-git

Now, libssh does not build out of the box for MinGW, a small change is required in CMakeLists.txt

  • Open the file src/CMakeLists.txt
  • Search for the line that contains set(libssh_SRC
  • Just before that line, paste this block:
if (WIN32)
  set(LIBSSH_LINK_LIBRARIES
    ${LIBSSH_LINK_LIBRARIES}
    ws2_32
  )
endif (WIN32)
  • Start the build process:
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake .. -G"MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/root -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$HOME/root
mingw32-make.exe -j$(nproc) install

Congratulations! you should now have all libraries built and installed under: $HOME/root