Building glew on windows with mingw

Question

Can anyone give me the correct command to build glew on windows with mingw?

I have tried:

gcc -static glew.c glewinfo.c visualinfo.c -I/path/to/glew/include

but I am getting thousands of linker errors (missing reference).

I can't build with Make because unfortunately the makefile has lots of unix only commands and i don't have cygwin or anything at work.

(alternatively if anyone can point me to a windows 32b build i would be very grateful)

Spicer

gcc -shared -O2 -Wl,--out-implib=libglew.dll.a -o libGLEW.dll -Iinclude -DGLEW_BUILD glew.c – Gamosepalous

Answer 1

To build it with MinGW, you should do (copied from the make log, with slight modifications and additional explanations):

mkdir lib/
mkdir bin/
gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.o -c src/glew.c
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32.dll.a    -o lib/glew32.dll src/glew.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

# Create library file: lib/libglew32.dll.a
ar cr lib/libglew32.a src/glew.o

# Create pkg-config file (optional if you just want a lib)
sed \
                -e "s|@prefix@|/usr|g" \
                -e "s|@libdir@|/usr/lib|g" \
                -e "s|@exec_prefix@|/usr/bin|g" \
                -e "s|@includedir@|/usr/include/GL|g" \
                -e "s|@version@|1.6.0|g" \
                -e "s|@cflags@||g" \
                -e "s|@libname@|GLEW|g" \
                < glew.pc.in > glew.pc

gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -DGLEW_MX -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.mx.o -c src/glew.c
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32mx.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32mx.dll.a -o lib/glew32mx.dll src/glew.mx.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

# Create library file: lib/libglew32mx.dll.a
ar cr lib/libglew32mx.a src/glew.mx.o

# Create pkg-config file (optional if you just want a lib)
sed \
                -e "s|@prefix@|/usr|g" \
                -e "s|@libdir@|/usr/lib|g" \
                -e "s|@exec_prefix@|/usr/bin|g" \
                -e "s|@includedir@|/usr/include/GL|g" \
                -e "s|@version@|1.6.0|g" \
                -e "s|@cflags@|-DGLEW_MX|g" \
                -e "s|@libname@|GLEWmx|g" \
                < glew.pc.in > glewmx.pc

# Make the glew visualinfo program. Skip this if you want just the lib
gcc -c -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o src/glewinfo.o src/glewinfo.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o bin/glewinfo.exe src/glewinfo.o -Llib  -lglew32 -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32
gcc -c -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o src/visualinfo.o src/visualinfo.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o bin/visualinfo.exe src/visualinfo.o -Llib  -lglew32 -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

You should then have a lib folder and a bin folder with the desired executables and libraries

Sur

This seems to have solved my errors, but it's worth noting that glew32.dll showed up in the lib folder rather than the bin folder (which was empty). Maybe I should have run it line-by-line on the command line rather than putting it in a .bat file, but as I said, it seemed to work. – Vladamir

I'm getting following errors libglew32.dll: No such file or directory lib/libglew32.dll.a: No such file or directory unrecognized option -soname unrecognized option --out-implib, any idea why? – Henton

OK, I have no idea that I was suppose to run it under MSYS - it works – Henton

Tested this on Windows 7 with MingW32 and it worked, thank you! – Duet

This totally works, thank you. Why don't the GLEW developers so much as hint towards this? Windows == VS for them. – Wernick

@Wernick as far as a lot of people are concerned VS is Windows. There was a time when I was pro VS until one day I was told "We want it to be cross compatible. VS was not designed with cross compatibility in mind if you ask me but saying that VS is a very good tool. – Dempster

i had to use -nostdlib in front of -shared in the 2 instruction containing gcc -shared to make it work with msys – Calumny

Answer 2

I got it working (with MinGW), i didn't compile the glew32mx but glew32 instead. Just download the source .zip from GLEW website. And remember create "lib" directory in the the glew-1.xx directory, otherwise it will complain about "can't find /lib/glew32.dll" when trying to compile the second line of code below:

    gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.o -c src/glew.c

    gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32.dll.a -o lib/glew32.dll src/glew.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

    # Create glew32.dll
    ar cr lib/libglew32.a src/glew.o

The precompiled binaries in GLEW website doesn't work with mingw, because they're compiled with visual studio, i think.

Diathermy

When the second command fails with a DllMainCRTStartup error, see stackoverflow.com/a/38729847 for addendum. – Nameplate

Answer 3

Found another solution that works with Code::Blocks. Steps:

1) Obviously you will need glew source code ;)

2) Open glew_shared.dsw files with C::B, edit project properties and, for each build target you need, change it's type from "Dynamic library" to "Static library" (it's right there, at Build targets tab). You can also change the destination directory as .dll files are built into bin\ directory.

3) Add #define GLEW_STATIC before #include

4) Build the target and it will result in proper libglew32*.a being created

Holusbolus

#define GLEW_STATIC needs to be added before you include glew.h! Thanks – Sharronsharyl

Answer 4

Glew build system try to detect automatically your environment using config/configure.guess. You may overload this behaviour by specify $SYSTEM to make. See config/Makefile.* for all supported build configuration. Glew already include configuration to use MinGW.

So, you may just have to launch:

make SYSTEM=linux-mingw64

On my Fedora, I had to tune some variables of config/Makefile.linux-mingw64:

• $CC and $LD was not correct
• I had to specify directory where system libraries was located
• I had to specify where glew should be installed

Finally, I launched:

make SYSTEM=linux-mingw64                                       \
  CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc LD=x86_64-w64-mingw32-ld            \
  LDFLAGS.EXTRA=-L/usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib    \
  GLEW_DEST=/usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw install

Devin

Answer 5

Further to PoL0's answer, i found those steps did work for me with MinGW on Code::Blocks but with one further alteration required - the default project has a lot of microsoft nonsense set in the "other options" under compiler options. Clear these and you'll have a good result (project build options -> [each target] -> compiler settings tab -> other options subtab)

You may also wish to enable optimisation for the two release targets (-O2 or -O3).

Additionally, the static libraries will be built in "bin" by default, you'll need to copy / move them to replace the ones in "lib".

Antonantone

Answer 6

Here is how VLC builds glew (static) on mingw:

https://github.com/videolan/vlc/tree/master/contrib/src/glew (they apply that patch). Guess glew has no easy option to "just" build a static library so you have to go through various hurdles (or manually compile, as the other answers allude to).

See also http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Installation/Windows#GLEW

and step 7 here: http://sujatha-techie.blogspot.com/2008/10/glsl-with-mingw.html

This is how mx does it: https://github.com/mxe/mxe/blob/master/src/glew.mk (looks like they basically just manually build everything, glew's Makefile seems weak...)

Dillie

Answer 7

I believe the main Glew website has a link to the binaries on the front page, for 32-bit and 64-bit windows systems.

Sur

only for visual C++. I tried 'reimp' to convert the .lib to .a files but it says they are invalid – Spicer

apparently mingw can link against their dll's, ref: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Installation/… – Dillie

Answer 8

if you have MingW installed just run Msys and make and make install there once you finish copy the libs and include folders to the bin libs and include folders in MingW and it should all work fine

simple and fast solution

Jasminjasmina