fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'Windows.h': and scons

Question

Today is officially my first day with C++ :P

I've downloaded Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 SP1, because I want to get my hands on the open source Enso Project.

So, after installing scons I went to the console and tried to compile it using scons, but I got this error:

C:\oreyes\apps\enso\enso-read-only\src\platform\win32\Include\WinSdk.h(64) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'Windows.h': No such file or directory
scons: *** [src\platform\win32\InputManager\AsyncEventProcessorRegistry.obj] Error 2
scons: building terminated because of errors.

After checking these links:

VS ans PSDK

Include tiffi.h

Wndows.h

I've managed to configure my installation like this:

And even run this script

And I managed to compile the file below in the IDE.

// Test.cpp : Defines the entry point for the console application.
//

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <Windows.h>


int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
    return 0;
}

But I still get that exception in the console. Does anyone have scons experience?

EDIT

Actually (and I forgot to tell you this) I started the command prompt with the link "Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt".

I assume this will include the paths in environment variables. Well after printing them I find that it didn't:

 echo %INCLUDE%
 echo %LIB%
 echo %PATH% 

And they were not present, so I created this .bat file:

set PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Bin"
set INCLUDE=%INCLUDE%;"C:\ Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Include"
set LIB=%LIB%;"C:\ Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib"

Still, scons seeems not to take the vars... :(

Answer 1

Using the above recommendations will not work with scons: scons does not import the user environment (PATH and other variables). The fundamental problem is that scons does not handle recent versions of SDKs/VS .

I am an occasional contributor to scons, and am working on this feature ATM. Hopefully, it will be included soon in scons, but the feature is much harder to implement reliably than I first expected, partly because every sdk/compiler combination is different (and sometimes even MS does not get it right, some of their .bat files are broken), so I can't give you a date. I hope it will be included in 1.2 (to be released in approximatively one month).

Answer 2

You need to set the include file path (and possibly other things). At the command line this is typically done using a batch file that Visual Studio installs called vsvars32.bat (or vcvars32.bat for compatibility with VC6).

I'm not familiar with scons so I don't know the best way to get these settings configured for that tool, but for standard makefiles there's usually a line in the makefile which sets a macro variable with the include directory path and that macro is used as part of a command line parameter in the command that invokes the compiler.

Another possibility might be to have the scons process invoke vsvars32.bat or run the scons script from a command line that has been configured with the batch file.

In short you need to get the things that vsvars32.bat configures into the scons configuration somehow.

Answer 3

There will be a batch file similar to this one (for MSVC 2005) that sets up the environment variables:

c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat

Step 1: Find a similar file in the Express installation folders

Step 2: Create a shortcut on the desktop with these target details and a suitably modified path:

cmd.exe /K "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat"

Step 3: Open the DOS prompt via this shortcut

The command line build should now work from within this console window.

Answer 4

You show us how you configured Visual Studio for compilations within Visual Studio but you didn't show us what command line environment you tried. Sorry I haven't tried Express versions so I don't know if they create additional Start menu shortcuts like Pro and above do. If you open a suitable command prompt with its environment variables already set then you can compile on the command line. Otherwise you have to set variables yourself or execute a batch script to set them, each time you open a command prompt.

Answer 5

It'll be nice when scons does this automatically. For now, I use this (run from an SDK command prompt, not sure if there is a difference if run after vsvars32.bat):

import os
env = Environment(ENV={'PATH': os.environ['PATH']})

env['ENV']['TMP'] = os.environ['TMP']
env.AppendUnique(CPPPATH=os.environ['INCLUDE'].split(';'))
env.AppendUnique(LIBPATH=os.environ['LIB'].split(';'))

Answer 6

This works for me while compiling wxwidgets with Visual C++ 2005 Express using the command line prompt:

REM Fix Error error C1083 'windows.h'

(Use /useenv option when compiling.)

set PDSKWIN=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2

(Change to the right one.)

set INCLUDE=%PDSKWIN%\Include;%INCLUDE%

set LIB=%PDSKWIN%\Lib;%LIB%

Then I use this line when compiling. I believe just add /useenv to your lines and everything should work fine:

vcbuild /useenv /nohtmllog /nologo name.proj (or any file to compile)