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Not everything (if any) which is written here will be in the final game!

Note: To build Orxonox with MinGW we now use the MinGW-w64 packages. Go here for a description of the current build process.

Windows with MingW32 and GCC (Outdated)

CMake

Info: CMake is a build-system. It is used to generate make-files or project-files for IDEs

Download the latest binary release from ​here and install it.

• While installing check the option to "add CMake to the system PATH"

MinGW

Info: MinGW is a collection of tools (like GCC and more), used to compile source code on Windows.

Download and install the latest version of ​MinGW.

1. Chose an install path, default is c:\mingw but every other path without whitespaces works
2. Default settings will do fine. Continue and let the installer download all packages. Continue again.
3. In the MinGW Installation Manager select "mingw32-base" and "mingw32-gcc-g++"
4. Click Installation → Apply Changes, then click Apply and wait for the download to finish
5. Wait until the installer downloaded and installed all packages (may take a while)

MSYS

Info: MSYS is a command shell, used to execute build scripts and more.

Download and install ​MSYS.

1. Chose an install path without whitespaces and install MSYS
2. (On some systems the post installation doesn't start (cmd.exe shows up with an error)
   In this case execute c:\<msys-install-path>\postinstall\pi.bat)
3. A command shell opens, answer yes (y) twice
4. Specify the path to your MinGW directory (by default this is c:/mingw).

Switch to the home-directory of your MSYS installation: c:\<msys-install-path>\home\<username>\
This is your homedirectory in MSYS, this is where the action takes place.

In the following, we'll call this directory c:\<msys-homedir>\ to make things shorter.

Note: MSYS installs two shortcuts (by default in Start/Programs/MinGW/MSYS/): 1. "MSYS" (black background; an extension of window's cmd.exe) and 2. "MSYS (rxvt)" (yellow background; a more elaborate shell). We recommend the rxvt version, because it can be resized to full-screen, but Orxonox works with both. (Additional note: The sortcut on the desktop links to the worse version.)

SVN

Info: We use SVN to upload code to the server and to manage different versions (branches).

Get SVN:

To use SVN? on your system we recommend TortoiseSVN, a very useful GUI-client. ​Download

TortoiseSVN is a shell extension. You can use it within Windows Explorer, which is very practical. Most options are available through the context menu (right mouse button).

Get the source:

Check out the Orxonox-repository into a folder named "trunk", for example c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk\. It's very important to use a directory inside your MSYS homedirectory, otherwise you can't compile.

• URL: https://svn.orxonox.net/game/code/trunk/
• Checkout directory: c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk\

Now do the same with the data repository and store it in a directoy called "data_extern":

• URL: https://svn.orxonox.net/game/data/trunk
• Checkout directory: c:\<msys-homedir>\data_extern

Now you should have the following directories in your home:

c:\<msys-homedir>\data_extern
c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk

In TortoiseSVN this is done by right clicking into c:\<msys-homedir>\ and chosing "SVN Checkout…". (see this picture)

Then set the URL of the repository to https://svn.orxonox.net/game/code/trunk/ and the checkout directory to c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk\ (checkout depth should be "Fully recursive" and revision "HEAD"). Accept the certificate and enter your username and password in the authentication form (only if it's the first time you check out code from our server). (see this picture)

If you're not using TortoiseSVN, use the "svn co <repository> <directory>" command. See SVN? for more information.

Dependencies

Info: Dependencies are external libraries that aren't included in the orxonox source.

Download the Orxonox dependencies: ​Download (get 7-Zip ​here).
Extract the archive into c:\<msys-homedir>\

Now you should have the following directories in your home: (see this picture)

c:\<msys-homedir>\data_extern
c:\<msys-homedir>\dependencies
c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk

OpenAL:

Make sure you have installed OpenAL, which might not be shipped with Windows. Download and install it from ​here.

Build Orxonox

First we add an alias to the profile of MSYS which helps us creating make-files with CMake. Open the MSYS console and type the following lines:

echo alias cm=\'cmake .. -G \"MSYS Makefiles\"\' >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

Change into the trunk folder and create a build directory:

cd trunk
mkdir build
cd build

Now we use the alias "cm" we created before. This shortcut will invoke CMake and create the Makefiles. Type the following into the MSYS console:

cm
make

The first command (cm) will check your system (and the dependency directory) for all needed libraries, create the configuration and generate the makefiles. The second command (make) builds Orxonox.

If you have a multicore CPU, use the -j [arg] option for make (where [arg] is the number of parallel build threads). For example make -j3 will spawn 3 threads, which is a reasonable number for a dual-core CPU.

If you get an error while executing one of those steps, report it in the ​Forum or ask us in ​IRC.

Compiling will take some time (CMake shows you the percentage). Be patient.

See some pictures of this:

• Step 1
• Step 2
• Step 3

Run Orxonox

If everything worked fine, start Orxonox with c:\<msys-homedir>\trunk\build\run.bat (you can't execute orxonox.exe directly).