-[[!meta title="cross-compiling a Windows binary under Linux using MinGW"]]
+[[!meta title="cross-compiling tinc for Windows under Linux using MinGW"]]
-## Howto: cross-compiling a Windows binary under Linux using MinGW
+## Howto: cross-compiling tinc for Windows under Linux using MinGW
This howto describes how to create a Windows binary of tinc. Although it is
possible to compile tinc under Windows itself, cross-compiling it under Linux
> sudo apt-get install mingw32 wine git-core
> sudo apt-get build-dep tinc
+Other Linux distributions may also have MinGW packages, use their respective
+package management tools to install them. Debian installs the cross-compiler
+in `/usr/i586-mingw32msvc/`. Other distributions might install it in another
+directory however, for example `/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/`. Check in which directory
+it is installed, and replace all occurences of `i586-mingw32msvc` in this
+example with the correct name from your distribution.
+
### Setting up the build directory and getting the sources
-We will create a directory called `mingw/` in the home directory.
-We use apt-get to get the required libraries necessary for tinc.
+We will create a directory called `mingw/` in the home directory. We use
+apt-get to get the required libraries necessary for tinc, and use `git` to get
+the latest development version of tinc.
> mkdir $HOME/mingw
> cd $HOME/mingw
> apt-get source openssl liblzo2-dev zlib1g-dev
> git clone git://tinc-vpn.org/tinc
-### Creating the mingw script
+### Making cross-compilation easy
-To make cross-compiling easy, we install a script called `mingw` that will set
+To make cross-compiling easy, we create a script called `mingw` that will set
up the necessary environment variables so configure scripts and Makefiles will
use the MinGW version of GCC and binutils:
> #!/bin/sh
> export CC=i586-mingw32msvc-gcc
> export CXX=i586-mingw32msvc-g++
-> export CPP=/usr/bin/i586-mingw32msvc-cpp
+> export CPP=i586-mingw32msvc-cpp
> export RANLIB=i586-mingw32msvc-ranlib
> export PATH="/usr/i586-mingw32msvc/bin:$PATH"
> exec "$@"
> export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
-You can also run the export commands from the `mingw` script by hand instead of
-calling the mingw script for every `./configure` or `make` command, or execute
-`$HOME/bin/mingw $SHELL` to get a shell with the right environment variables
-set.
+We use this script to call `./configure` and `make` with the right environment
+variables, but only when the `./configure` script doesn't support cross-compilation itself.
+You can also run the export commands from the `mingw` script by
+hand instead of calling the mingw script for every `./configure` or `make`
+command, or execute `$HOME/bin/mingw $SHELL` to get a shell with these
+environment variables set, but in this howto we will call it explicitly every
+time it is needed.
### Compiling LZO
Cross-compiling LZO is easy:
-> cd $HOME/lzo2-2.03
-> mingw ./configure --host=mingw32
-> mingw make
-> DESTDIR=$HOME/mingw mingw make install
+> cd $HOME/mingw/lzo2-2.03
+> ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc
+> make
+> DESTDIR=$HOME/mingw make install
### Compiling Zlib
OpenSSL is always a bit hard to compile, because they have their own
`Configure` script that needs some tweaking. There is also a small bug in
-e_os2.h that breaks compilation with recent versions of GCC. First download this [[openssl-cross-compilation.diff]] to your home directory, then patch OpenSSL, and then compile as usual:
+e_os2.h that breaks compilation with recent versions of GCC. First download
+this [[openssl-cross-compilation.diff]] to your home directory, then patch
+OpenSSL, and then compile as usual. Do not use the `-j` option when compiling
+OpenSSL, it will break.
> cd $HOME/mingw/openssl-0.9.8k
> patch < $HOME/openssl-cross-compilation.diff
> cd $HOME/mingw/tinc
> autoreconf -fsi
-> mingw ./configure --host=mingw32 -with-openssl=$HOME/mingw/usr/local
-> mingw make
+> ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --with-openssl=$HOME/mingw/usr/local
+> make
### Testing tinc
projects / wiki / blobdiff