Viewer 2 Microsoft Windows Builds

Work in progress These instructions are not yet complete or debugged as of March 22, 2011.

When finished, we hope this page will constitute a complete recipe for compiling viewer 2 from source on a Windows machine.

Philosophy: to keep it brief, this page should only include steps we KNOW ARE NEEDED, not random hints. Extra details or open issues can go on the talk page.

Note: Following this recipe will probably take 6 to 12 hours of wall-clock time, and 2 to 6 hours of your time, if you're starting from a fresh Windows XP/Vista/7 system.

Establish your programming environment

This is needed for compiling any viewer based on the LL open source code, but only needs to be done once.

Obtain Visual Studio 2010 (Express is OK)
Click here to download Visual C++ Express - current version is VS2010
Install Microsoft Platform & DirectX SDKs
Download and install Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 (ISO) or Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 (Web Install), and

Download and install DirectX SDK (June 2010)
Run Microsoft Update, and keep running it until no updates are needed. This may take 6~8 iterations on older versions of windows.
Install other development tools
- Unicode NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System)
  This is the package installer used to build Setup.exe.
- CMake
  This should be version 2.8.4 (or above in the 2.8.x series). Ensure that any older versions aren't in your PATH environment variables.
- Cygwin
  When you run the Cygwin setup utility make sure you have selected to install patchutils, flex, and bison (all located under "devel") which are not part of the default install. Do not install Cygwin Python or Mercurial. You won't need to use the Cygwin shell for anything; just have the binaries accessible to the regular command line via your PATH.
- Python (either Python.org Standard Python or ActivePython)
  Note: build scripts support Python 2.6, not 2.7 yet.
- Mercurial (either TortoiseHg or Mercurial Hg)
- (optional) Notepad++
  You need to use an editor that conforms to the Coding Standard. In particular, you must not check in files with DOS line endings except in very limited circumstances; see How to avoid DOS line endings in Windows tools.

Note: If the installer for a particular package does not update your PATH environment setting you will have to do this manually.

Important: The native Cygwin python and hg do not work very well and should be avoided.

If necessary, use the following shell scripts to update your Cygwin installation to use the Windows native versions of these apps:

Override cygwin's python:

 if [ -f /usr/bin/python.exe ]; then
   mv /usr/bin/python.exe /usr/bin/cygwin-python.exe
 fi
 cp /cygdrive/c/Python26/python.exe /usr/bin/python.exe

Override cygwin's mercurial:

 if [ -f /usr/bin/hg.exe ]; then
   mv /usr/bin/hg.exe /usr/bin/cygwin-hg.exe
 fi
 cp /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/Mercurial/hg.exe /usr/bin/hg.exe

Rename cygwin's link to allow VS2010 linker to run:

 if [ -f /usr/bin/link.exe ]; then
   mv /usr/bin/link.exe /usr/bin/cygwin-link.exe
 fi

Set up your source code tree

Plan your directory structure ahead of time. If you are going to be producing changes or patches you will be cloning a copy of an unaltered source code tree for every change or patch you make, so you might want to have all this work stored in it's own directory.

To get a copy of the source code tree:

Open up a DOS/Command window
Make a directory to contain it (it is strongly suggested to name it viewer-development)
Go into that directory
Do hg init
Do hg pull http://hg.secondlife.com/viewer-development

Example: ((specific snapshot example TBD))

Let's say some time has gone by since you have performed the previous steps and now you want to develop a change or work on a jira. You will

Go into viewer-development (or whatever you named the master source tree copy)
Do hg pull
Do hg update
Move up one level from viewer-development
Do hg clone viewer-development VWR-nnnnn (where nnnnn is the jira number, or clone to a name of your choosing if there is not jira number)

Run Autobuild

First, install Autobuild into Python, by running one of the following at the command line:

easy_install autobuild (note the underscore)
pip install autobuild

Then decide whether you want to build at the command line, or generate a Visual Studio solution. (For details on either, see Building the Viewer with Autobuild.)

Instructions for setting up Fmod needed here

Build the viewer with autobuild

At the command line in the source tree's root directory (e.g. C:\linden\viewer-development\), run:

autobuild build -c [CONFIGURATION]

...where [CONFIGURATION] is one of those listed at Building the Viewer with Autobuild#Build a desired configuration (DebugOS, RelWithDebInfoOS, ReleaseOS, etc.)

Compile using the IDE

At the command line in the source tree's root directory (e.g. C:\linden\viewer-development\), run:

autobuild configure

This will create the build-vc100 directory at the root of the source tree, in which contains the SecondLife.sln solution file. The solution is fully configured and ready to be built — open it and compile.

Iteratively fix things until the compile succeeds

If you encounter errors during building or configuration, check the talk page and report useful experiences there.

Common Issues/Bugs/Glitches And Solutions

Getting help:
- Subscribe to OpenSource-Dev Mailing List (subscribe) and post your question there.
- For faster response, find a free IRC client program and join #opensl on freenode, the general open source viewer discussion and development channel. Hopefully a helpful person is online when you ask your question.

References

Tip of the hat to Nicky_Perian for User:Nicky_Perian/Visual_Studio_10_Autobuild