6.5 KiB
A lot of thrashing was involved.
So first I'll list the steps that I know are necessary.
Then after that I'll list the steps which were probably unnecessary.
Definitely necessary
Install Visual Studio Community:
Install VST3 Audio Plug-Ins SDK
Such that this folder exists:
C:\SDKs\VST_SDK\VST3_SDK
Install JUCE framework
https://shop.juce.com/get-juce
JUCE should be installed to C:\Juce
Note: the only thing we actually need from here is C:\Juce\modules. I've copied that into the repository now, so soon I'll be able to make that step skippable.
That's all. Probably.
Well, unless you're also interested in the Setup project:
Configure "Setup" project
This is project constructs a .exe and .msi installer (i.e. for distributing the synth).
Install support for Visual Studio Setup projects
Fix unrecoverable build error
Register MergeMod.dll
If you encounter "Unrecoverable build error" when building juicysfplugin's setup.exe installer, you need to open an administrator prompt and register MergeMod.dll:
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSI Tools\MergeMod.dll"
You may also need to run Visual Studio as Adminstrator.
You should also consider closing the solution, deleting Visual Studio's temp files (e.g. any file touched today) inside:
%LocalAppData%\Temp
...then re-openng the solution, and attempting build again.
Necessary for changing the dependencies
If you want to build against a newer version of fluidsynth, you'll need libfluidsynth.dll and friends.
The way I originally got these was from MSYS2's MinGW repository.
Install msys2 toolchain (x86_64):
MSYS2 is a software distro and building platform for Windows an independent rewrite of MSYS, based on modern Cygwin (POSIX compatibility layer) and MinGW-w64 provides a bash shell, Autotools, revision control systems and the like for building native Windows applications using MinGW-w64 toolchains features a package management system to provide easy installation of packages, Pacman
Grab latest package definitions:
Press the Start key to search for and launch an MSYS2 command prompt. Named MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit.
pacman -Syu
It may ask you to close the terminal and run update one more time:
pacman -Su
Install libfluidsynth.dll:
https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages/blob/master/mingw-w64-fluidsynth/PKGBUILD
pacman -S --needed mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-fluidsynth
Learn about how to make changes to PKGBUILD
If you want to change compile flags on the fluidsynth package, you'll need to clone the MINGW-packages repository, edit mingw-w64-fluidsynth/PKGBUILD, and build with makepkg-mingw -sCLf.
https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki/Creating-Packages#re-building-a-package
git clone "https://github.com/Alexpux/MINGW-packages"
cd MINGW-packages/mingw-w64-fluidsynth
makepkg-mingw -sCLf
pacman -U mingw-w64-*-fluidsynth-*-any.pkg.tar.xz
Learn about dynamic linking
You can use ldd to check where a dll looks for its dependencies:
$ ldd /mingw64/bin/libfluidsynth-1.dll
libsndfile-1.dll => /mingw64/bin/libsndfile-1.dll (0x70440000)
…
Side-note: fuslogvw helps you debug .NET's run-time linker. Not relevant to juicysfplugin (because it's not managed code), but it's a useful tool for Windows developers to know about.
Prefer CLion?
We don't have Windows support in our CMake project (I could add it by using Projucer to generate a CODE::Blocks exporter, but I don't want to maintain that).
Anyway, here's my notes.
Install CLion
https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/nextversion/
Install MinGW toolchain
Required for CLion integration.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36375081/how-to-run-clion-with-msys2-on-windows
You don't need all the packages here (like Ada, Fortran, Objective-C...), but space is cheap so just install all.
pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain
Configure CLion
Add MinGW Toolchain:
C:\msys64\mingw64
Want to use Visual Studio upon a CMake project?
We don't have Windows support in our CMake project (see "Prefer CLion?" section for brief explanation), but I wrote some notes on this whilst I was thrashing around.
Configure Visual Studio build environment
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/CompilationGuide/MSVC#Settingtheenvironment
Sets source and target architecture to x64:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Preview\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64
Configure MSYS2 environment
Press the Start key to search for and launch an MSYS2 command prompt. Named MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit.
Ensure that on MSYS2's path, Visual Studio's cl and link programs have the highest precedence:
echo 'export PATH="/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/Preview/Community/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.14.26428/bin/Hostx64/x64/:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
Ensure that any libs or headers you wish to include are added to the path:
echo 'export LIB="EXAMPLE:$LIB"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export INCLUDE="EXAMPLE:$INCLUDE"' >> ~/.bashrc
Install LLVM
I can't remember why, since this seems to be switching to a different toolchain or compiler altogether.
Maybe it was an alternative approach.
https://releases.llvm.org/download.html
Glossary
https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki/How-does-MSYS2-differ-from-Cygwin
Cygwin: Gives you application support for POSIX compatible API, build and run environment. Useful when you have a native POSIX application you want to compile and run on a windows box.
MSYS2: API's and build environment. This is useful when you have something like a library you want to use that requires autotools or has a complicated build system.
MinGW: POSIX API. Useful if you want to compile, or especially cross compile using gcc, use POSIX api's and have access to unix command line tools.