Windows build instructions

This page contains step-by-step instructions for building libpinproc and pypinproc in Windows. These instructions have been verified to work in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Note - You only need to build from source code if you are making code changes or you are making use of the development branches of libpinproc/pypinproc/pyprocgame. All other users can simply download and run the Windows installer from the P-ROC software page. The Windows installer includes the low level USB driver, a firmware update utility, and a pre-built pypinproc python extension so you can start using the pyprocgame python game framework if that interests you.

Tools

Download and install MinGW. The easiest way is to use the automated installer mingw-get-inst. Any of the latest versions should work.
- Note - Be sure to install C and C++ support at the very least.
- Note - the rest of these notes assume you installed to C:\MinGW. If you installed somewhere else, substitute your path in the instructions below.
Add C:\MinGW\bin to your path. (Right click My Computer, select Properties, click on the Advanced tab, click on environment variables, and add C:\MinGW\bin to the PATH variable under System variables. The new path should be reflected when you open a new command prompt).

Download and install cmake and add <your-cmake-directory>\bin to your path. Latest version tested: 2.8

libpinproc

Download and extract the ftd2xx USB driver for Windows. Latest version tested: 2.08.14, newer version *should* work fine too.
- copy ftd2xx.lib and ftd2xx.dll from the i386\ directory to C:\MinGW\lib
- also copy ftd2xx.dll to Windows\System32\ (32-bit) or Windows\SysWOW64\ (64-bit) - this *should* happen automatically when you plug in your P-ROC board, but if you're trying to do off-line development, you might need to do it manually.
- copy ftd2xx.h to C:\MinGW\include

Build yaml-cpp
- Download and extract yaml-cpp into a directory of your choice. Latest version tested: 0.2.5
- From the command line, 'cd' into your yaml-cpp directory and run the following commads:

   mkdir bin
   cd bin
   cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
   mingw32-make
   cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=C:\MinGW -P cmake_install.cmake

- Note - These commands expect cmake and mingw32-make to be in your path
- Note - If you want to build a static library instead of a DLL, edit the CMakeLists.txt file in the yaml-cpp directory and change the "set(LIB_TYPE SHARED)" to "set(LIB_TYPE_STATIC)". Then rerun the last two commands from the bin directory.

Build libpinproc
- Download (and extract) libpinproc into a directory of your choice. Note - make sure you select the desired branch to download (either master or dev).
  - Download either by clicking 'Download Sources' or by installing a git client and checking out the repository.
- From the command line, 'cd' into the libpinproc directory and run the following commands:

   mkdir bin
   cd bin
   cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
   mingw32-make
   cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=C:\MinGW -P cmake_install.cmake

- Note - If you want to build a shared library instead of a static one, add "-DLIB_TYPE=SHARED" before the -DEXTRA_INC... on the first cmake line. (3rd command).

Build pypinproc - libpinproc Python extension
- Install Python 2.6 if you don't already have it. Usually it installs to C:\Python2.6\
  - Note - pypinproc requires 32-bit Python, even on 64-bit Windows machines. So please make sure to install the 32-bit version of Python .
  - Create a file in C:\Python2.6\Lib\distutils\ called 'distutils.cfg', and enter the following two lines:
    - [build]
    - compiler=mingw32
- Download (and extract) pypinproc into a directory of your choice. Note - make sure you select the desired branch to download (either master or dev).
  - Download either by clicking 'Download Sources' or by installing a git client and checking out the repository.
- From the command line, 'cd' into your pypinproc directory
- edit setup.py:
  - Make sure the 'include_dirs' line contains <your_path_to_libpinproc>/include (note - use forward slashes instead of backslashes).
  - Make sure the 'library_dirs' line contains 'C:/MinGW/lib' since that's where you put ftd2xx.lib and libpinproc.a (note - use forward slashes instead of backslashes).
  - Change the 'libraries' line to read: (Note - the order of the libraries seems to matter; so copy the line exactly.)
    - libraries = ['pinproc', 'ftd2xx'],
  - Save and quit.
- Run '\Python2.6\python.exe setup.py install' in the pypinproc directory.
- This should compile pypinproc and install it into your Python packages directory.
- NOTE: If the setup script complains about "error: unrecognized command line option '-mno-cygwin'" then the setup script must be modified since newer versions of GCC have dropped the legacy -mno-cygwin option.
  - go to C:\Python26\Lib\distutils\ and open cygwincompiler.py in Notepad or your favorite text editor
  - Edit lines 322-326 to look like this:

   self.set_executables(compiler='gcc -O -Wall',
                            compiler_so='gcc -mdll -O -Wall',
                            compiler_cxx='g++ -O -Wall',
                            linker_exe='gcc',
                            linker_so='%s %s %s'

- Note that you're only removing the -mno-cygwin option from the argument list.
  - Save the script and rerun '\Python2.6\python.exe setup.py install'