clozure cl: cl-freetype2 on windows 7

Question

I'm working on windows 7 64bit system using clozure cl (version 1.8-r15286m) with quicklisp installed.

I need some freetype2 bindings for common lisp. (map characters to glyphs + kerning info)

I've tried to install "cl-freetype2" using

(ql:quickload "cl-freetype")

from 32bit clozure cl, and I've run into several problems.

1. "grovel.lisp" (located in quicklisp/software/cffi_0.11.1/grovel/grovel.lisp) assumes that I have gcc installed at "c:/msys/1.0/bin/gcc.exe" (I have mingw-gcc in path, but not there). Fixed by replacing "c:/msys/1.0/bin/gcc.exe" with "gcc" in "grovel.lisp".
2. When trying to compile cffi bindings for freetype2, same file does not include drive letters when passing include directories to compiler (i.e. instead of -i"d:/somedir" it passes -i"/somedir" to gcc`).
3. "grovel.lisp" tries to include unix include directories.

I cannot fix #2 myself. I found this discussions, tried both listed patches, and neither of them worked. (first one breaks cffi, because ccl can't find neither "namestring-prefix" function nor "pathname-prefix" function), second one does not fix the problem.

What can I do in this situation? I'd prefer to avoid fixing "groveller" myself, I simply need some bindings for freetype2. Basically, I need to be able to

1. Load truetype font.
2. Map unicode char to glyph.
3. Get kerning information for pair of glyphs.
4. Load glyph bitmap.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Figured it out.

Installing cl-freetype2 via quicklisp requires fully functional installation of MinGW.

1. Ensure that mingw-gmp is installed. (mingw-get install gmp)
2. Ensure that mingw/bin directory is within system path (right click on "My Computer"->Properties->Advanced->Environment Variables). Is Set. Should be something like "D:/development/MinGW/bin " (assuming MinGW is installed in "d:/development").
3. Locate "grovel.lisp" within your ccl installation, and replace ""c:/msys/1.0/bin/gcc.exe" with "gcc". You don't have to do that if gcc is installed at this location.
4. Launch mingw shell.
5. download unpack and install latest Freetype2 tarball using ".configure && make && make install", similarly to unix enviornment.
6. Locate freetype-6.dll copy it into freetype.dll and move freetype.dll into location within system path.
7. (Assuming that MinGW is installed in "d:/development/MinGW"), create CPATH user environment variable with following context: D:\development\MinGW\msys\1.0\local\include\freetype2;D:\development\MinGW\msys\1.0\local\include. That is - if you didn't specify "/usr" prefix during freetype2 compilation.
8. From within mingw shell, launch wx86cl and try (ql:quickload "cl-freetype2"). It should work properly.
9. If it still doesn't work, in all your root drives create directory junctions to directory in which mingw is installed. (i.e. "c:/development" linking to "d:/development", etc).

I must admit that this was much hassle, so I still think that it'll be a better idea to make a small dll that provides minimal set of functions I need while using freetype internally, then load this dll using cffi. This should be much easier.