ncurses/README.MinGW

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-- $Id: README.MinGW,v 1.5 2011/02/26 16:57:17 tom Exp $
-- Author: Juergen Pfeifer
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This is work in progress, but it's in an state where one can see it
works at least on the Windows Console.

You should install the MSYS package, so that you've a shell environment that
allows you to run the scripts, especially configure etc.  You can get that
from http://www.mingw.org

To build ncurses for native Windows, you need the MinGW toolchain.  The
original MinGW toolchain from the above site is only for 32-Bit Windows.  As
Windows Server - and also regular workstations - are moving to 64-Bit, it
seems to be reasonable to have a toolchain that supports both architectures. 
I recommend to use the TDM gcc toolchain which you can find at
http://tdm-gcc.tdragon.net/download.  Go to the download section and select
the bundle installer for tdm64 (MinGW-w64).  This installs a multilib version
of the gcc toolchain that can compile for native 32- and 64-Bit Windows
versions.  It also comes with a working pthread implementation.

The latest config and build scripts we use for MinGW have only been tested
for the gcc-4.4 compiler toolchain (or better).

Using MinGW is a pragmatic decision, it's the easiest way to port this
heavily UNIX based sourcebase to native Windows. The goal is of course
to provide the includes, libraries and DLLs to be used with the more
common traditional development environments on Windows, mainly with
Microsoft Visual Studio.

If you start a bash from the MSYS environment, please make sure that the
Microsoft Development tools are in your PATH right after the MinGW
tools. The LIB.EXE tool is the only one needed. You need this only if 
you want to build DLLs that work with native Windows programs. If you 
don't have any Microsoft  Development tools on your machine, consider 
at least to get the free "Visual C++ 2010 Express Edition". 
It contains the LIB.EXE tool. You may also use this compiler to test 
writing native Windows programs using the ncurses DLLs without using 
MinGW then for writing apps.

It is necessary to unset the TERM environment variable, to activate the
Windows console-driver.

Please also make sure that MSYS links to the correct directory containing
your MinGW toolchain. For TDM this is usually C:\MinGW64. In your Windows
CMD.EXE command shell go to the MSYS root directory (most probably 
C:\MSYS or C:\MSYS\1.0) and verify, that there is a junction point mingw
that points to the MinGW toolchain directory. If not, delete the mingw
directory and use the mklink command (or the linkd.exe utility on older
Windows) to create the junction point.

This code requires WindowsNT 5.1 or better, which means on the client
Windows XP or better, on the server Windows Server 2003 or better.

In order to build ncurses for the planned interop layer with .NET, we
recommend to use these options with configure

	  --disable-home-terminfo
	  --enable-reentrant
	  --enable-sp-funcs
	  --enable-term-driver
	  --enable-interop
	  --with-pthread         (if using TDM toolchain as recommended)

This is the configuration commandline as I'm using it at the moment:

./configure \
	--prefix=/mingw \
	--without-cxx-binding \
	--without-ada \
	--enable-warnings \
	--enable-assertions \
	--enable-reentrant \
	--with-debug \
	--with-normal \
	--disable-home-terminfo \
	--enable-sp-funcs \
	--enable-term-driver \
	--enable-interop \
	--with-pthread

If you are on a 64-Bit Windows system and want to build a 32-Bit version
of ncurses, you may use this commandline for configuration (when using
the TDM toolchain):

CC="gcc -m32" LD="ld -m32" ./configure \
	--prefix=/mingw \
	--without-cxx-binding \
	--without-ada \
	--enable-warnings \
	--enable-assertions \
	--enable-reentrant \
	--with-debug \
	--with-normal \
	--disable-home-terminfo \
	--enable-sp-funcs \
	--enable-term-driver \
	--enable-interop \
	--with-pthread

All the options above are - like the whole Windows support -
experimental.

In order to build the DLLs, after your regular make you must call

   make dlls

A lot is still TODO, e.g.:

  - Wide Character support
    The Win32Con driver should actually only use Unicode in the
    future.
  - Thread support (locking). If using TDM toolchain this is done by
    configuring pthreads.
  - A GUI console driver
  - Support for Terminals attached via a serial port (via terminfo)
  - Support for networked Terminal connections (via terminfo)
  - Workarounds for MinGW's filesystem access are necessary to make infocmp
    work (though tic works).

To support terminfo, we need to have an ioctl() simulation for the
serial and networked Terminals.