How to compile Cairo for Visual C++ 2008 (Express edition)

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/85622

Question

Most precompiled Windows binaries are made with the MSYS+gcc toolchain. It uses MSVCRT runtime, which is incompatible with Visual C++ 2005/2008.

So, how to go about and compile Cairo 1.6.4 (or later) for Visual C++ only. Including dependencies (png,zlib,pixman).

Was it helpful?

Solution

Here are instructions for building Cairo/Cairomm with Visual C++.

Required:

  • Visual C++ 2008 Express SP1 (now includes SDK)
  • MSYS 1.0

To use VC++ command line tools, a batch file 'vcvars32.bat' needs to be run.

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vcvars32.bat

ZLib

Download (and extract) zlib123.zip from http://www.zlib.net/

    cd zlib123
    nmake /f win32/Makefile.msc

    dir
        # zlib.lib is the static library
        #
        # zdll.lib is the import library for zlib1.dll
        # zlib1.dll is the shared library

libpng

Download (and extract) lpng1231.zip from http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

The VC++ 9.0 compiler gives loads of "this might be unsafe" warnings. Ignore them; this is MS security panic (the code is good).

    cd lpng1231\lpng1231        # for some reason this is two stories deep

    nmake /f ../../lpng1231.nmake ZLIB_PATH=../zlib123

    dir
        # libpng.lib is the static library
        #
        # dll is not being created

Pixman

Pixman is part of Cairo, but a separate download.

Download (and extract) pixman-0.12.0.tar.gz from http://www.cairographics.org/releases/

Use MSYS to untar via 'tar -xvzf pixman*.tar.gz'

Both Pixman and Cairo have Makefiles for Visual C++ command line compiler (cl), but they use Gnu makefile and Unix-like tools (sed etc.). This means we have to run the make from within MSYS.

Open a command prompt with VC++ command line tools enabled (try 'cl /?'). Turn that command prompt into an MSYS prompt by 'C:\MSYS\1.0\MSYS.BAT'.

DO NOT use the MSYS icon, because then your prompt will now know of VC++. You cannot run .bat files from MSYS.

Try that VC++ tools work from here: 'cl -?'

Try that Gnu make also works: 'make -v'.

Cool.

    cd     (use /d/... instead of D:)
    cd pixman-0.12.0/pixman
    make -f Makefile.win32

This defaults to MMX and SSE2 optimizations, which require a newish x86 processor (Pentium 4 or Pentium M or above: http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE2 )

There's quite some warnings but it seems to succeed.

    ls release
        # pixman-1.lib  (static lib required by Cairo)

Stay in the VC++ spiced MSYS prompt for also Cairo to compile.

cairo

Download (and extract) cairo-1.6.4.tar.gz from http://www.cairographics.org/releases/

    cd 
    cd cairo-1.6.4

The Makefile.win32 here is almost good, but has the Pixman path hardwired.

Use the modified 'Makefile-cairo.win32':

    make -f ../Makefile-cairo.win32 CFG=release \
            PIXMAN_PATH=../../pixman-0.12.0 \
            LIBPNG_PATH=../../lpng1231 \
            ZLIB_PATH=../../zlib123

(Write everything on one line, ignoring the backslashes)

It says "no rule to make 'src/cairo-features.h'. Use the manually prepared one (in Cairo > 1.6.4 there may be a 'src/cairo-features-win32.h' that you can simply rename):

    cp ../cairo-features.h src/

Retry the make command (arrow up remembers it).

    ls src/release
        #
        # cairo-static.lib

cairomm (C++ API)

Download (and extract) cairomm-1.6.4.tar.gz from http://www.cairographics.org/releases/

There is a Visual C++ 2005 Project that we can use (via open & upgrade) for 2008.

    cairomm-1.6.4\MSCV_Net2005\cairomm\cairomm.vcproj

Changes that need to be done:

  • Change active configuration to "Release"

  • Cairomm-1.0 properties (with right click menu)

        C++/General/Additional Include Directories: 
            ..\..\..\cairo-1.6.4\src    (append to existing)

        Linker/General/Additional library directories:
            ..\..\..\cairo-1.6.4\src\release
            ..\..\..\lpng1231\lpng1231
            ..\..\..\zlib123

        Linker/Input/Additional dependencies:   
            cairo-static.lib libpng.lib zlib.lib msimg32.lib
  • Optimization: fast FPU code
            C++/Code generation/Floating point model
                Fast

Right click on 'cairomm-1.0' and 'build'. There are some warnings.

    dir cairomm-1.6.4\MSVC_Net2005\cairomm\Release
        #
        # cairomm-1.0.lib
        # cairomm-1.0.dll
        # cairomm.def

OTHER TIPS

These steps can build the latest cairo on 2015-11-15 for Visual Studio 2015 community. The debug build is DLL, linking to the DLL version of CRT. The release build is static library, linking to the static link version of CRT and requiring no DLLs.

Install GnuWin

The build scripts require GNU command line tools. The following steps are tested with GnuWin from Chocolatey. MSYS might also work.

Download

zlib128.zip, lpng1619.zip, cairo-1.14.4.tar.xz, pixman-0.32.8.tar.gz

Extract

Extract these archives and rename the directories:

. (my_cairo_build_root)
├─cairo
├─libpng
├─pixman
└─zlib

zlib

Do not build. The build script uses MSVCRT that clashes with Visual Studio 2015. Use the generated lib from libpng build.

libpng

Edit libpng\projects\vstudio\zlib.props:

  • in <ZLibSrcDir> remove the version number: ..\..\..\..\zlib
  • in <WindowsSDKDesktopARMSupport> change true to false

Open libpng\projects\vstudio\vstudio.sln in Visual Studio and confirm the upgrade. Use the default Debug configuration, and right click project libpng to build. Switch to Release Library configuration and right click project libpng to build.

pixman

Edit pixman\Makefile.win32.common:

  • Replace CFG_CFLAGS = -MD -O2 with CFG_CFLAGS = -MT -O2 (linking to the static link version of CRT in release build)
  • Replace @mkdir with @"mkdir" (there are cmd's builtin mkdir and GnuWin's mkdir, the quotes force the latter to be used)

Run Visual Studio x86 Native Command Prompt from start menu: 

cd /d my_cairo_build_root
cd pixman\pixman
make -f Makefile.win32
make -f Makefile.win32 CFG=debug

cairo

Edit cairo\build\Makefile.win32.common:

  • Replace CFG_CFLAGS = -MD -O2 with CFG_CFLAGS = -MT -O2
  • Replace CAIRO_LIBS += $(LIBPNG_PATH)/libpng.lib with CAIRO_LIBS += $(LIBPNG_PATH)/lib/$(CFG)/libpng16.lib. Now, copy the directory libpng\projects\vstudio\Debug into (created) libpng\lib\ and rename it to debug. Copy the directory libpng\projects\vstudio\Release Library into libpng\lib\ and rename it to release.
  • Replace CAIRO_LIBS += $(ZLIB_PATH)/zdll.lib with CAIRO_LIBS += $(LIBPNG_PATH)/lib/$(CFG)/zlib.lib

  • There are two @mkdir -p $(CFG)/`dirname $<` lines. Replace both of them with:

    @"mkdir" -p $(CFG)/$<
@"rmdir" $(CFG)/$<

Edit cairo\build\Makefile.win32.features-h:

  • Replace all @echo with @"echo"

There is an unusable link.exe in GnuWin. Rename C:\GnuWin\bin\link.exe to link_.exe to avoid clash.

Run Visual Studio x86 Native Command Prompt from start menu: 

cd /d my_cairo_build_root
cd cairo
make -f Makefile.win32 CFG=debug
make -f Makefile.win32 CFG=release

The last two command will show "Built successfully!" but return error. Ignore them.

Rename back C:\GnuWin\bin\link.exe.

Configure Visual Studio

Create a directory include and copy the following headers in:

  • cairo\cairo-version.h (not cairo\src\cairo-version.h)
  • cairo\src\*.h, excluding cairo\src\cairo-version.h

Add that directory to include path in Visual Studio.

Add cairo\src\$(Configuration) and libpng\lib\$(Configuration) to library path. $(Configuration) will automatically expand to Debug or Release when building.

Put cairo\src\debug\cairo.dll and libpng\lib\debug\libpng16.dll to one of Windows' PATH.

Before #include <cairo.h>, setup the link options:

#ifndef NDEBUG
#   pragma comment(lib, "cairo")
#else
#define CAIRO_WIN32_STATIC_BUILD
#   pragma comment(lib, "cairo-static")
#   pragma comment(lib, "libpng16")
#   pragma comment(lib, "zlib")
#endif

The instructions don't seem to work with current version of imlib, I wonder if it's worth reasking this question ?

Did you check here: http://cairographics.org/visualstudio/ ? What do you mean 'It uses MSCVRT runtime, which is incompatible with Visual C++ 2005/2008' ? What are the exact problems you're having?

I ran into two problems when building on Windows (Visual Studio 2008, GNU Make 3.81):

  1. Invalid "if" constructs in src/Makefile.sources. Fixed that using 

    sed "s/^if \([A-Z_]*\)$/ifeq ($(\1), 1)/" src\Makefile.sources

  2. _lround is not available on Windows/MSVC. Worked around that using 

    sed "s/#define _cairo_lround lround/static inline long cairo_const
_cairo_lround(double r) { return (long)floor(r + .5); }/"`

    (which is probably a poor fix)

These issues aside, everything works great (for both x86 and x86_64 architectures).

I have done this, but I don't have any ready-written instructions. My builds are also rather minimal as I haven't needed support for eg. PNG and SVG files, I just used it to render generated vector graphics to memory buffers.

But what I did was read through the config.h and other files for the UNIX/GNU build system and write my own suited for MSVC, and then create a project with the appropriate source files. It probably takes a few hours at best to do this, but when you're done it just works ;)

Edit: Do see this page, it has an MSVC 2003 (7.1) project for building cairo: http://slinavlee.googlepages.com/

MSYS+gcc toolchain uses the old MSVCRT runtime library (now built into Windows) and Visual C++ 2005/2008 bring their own. It is a known fact that code should not depend on multiple runtimes. Passing things s.a. file handles, memory pointers etc. will be affected, and will cause apparently random crashes in such scenario.

I have not been bitted by this. Then again, I don't really target Windows any more, either. But I've been told enough to not even try the solution.

What could have worked, is linking all the dependencies statically into the lib (say, Cairomm). Static libs don't have a runtime bound to them, do they? But I did not try this. I actually got the VC++ building of all ingredients to work, but it took days.

I hadn't found the URL you give. Strange in itself; I looked 'everywhere'. Then again, it is for Visual Studio 2003.NET, so two generations behind already.

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