Building On Windows With Qt

In order to build the program (that now requires Qt), CMake needs to be able to find the Qt files.  It accomplishes this by looking for the Qmake executable (qmake.exe on Windows) even if it is not actually used, but its location is used to determine where Qt is installed.  To find the Qmake executable, CMake searches the directories in the execution path.

On Linux, the qmake executable is already in the standard directories.  On Windows, the directory for qmake.exe needs to be added to the execution path.  The instructions for adding a directory to the execution path was given in the post on October 20.  The directory C:\QtSDK\Desktop\Qt\4.8.1\mingw\bin needs to be added.  If using the MSYS command line, the directory /c/QtSDK/Desktop/Qt/4.8.1/mingw/bin needs to be added to the path (see post on October 7).

QtCreator can be used to access the git repository (see post on October 20).  To switch to the latest development branch (branch0.2 at the time of this post), the branch needs to retrieved from the repository on GitHub.  On the Tools menu, select Git and then Pull.  Only local branches can be checked out, so a local branch needs to be created.  On the Tools menu, select Git and then Branches....  Select branch0.2 under origin and click the Add... button.  Click OK on the next Dialog.  This will create local branch0.2, which can now be selected and checked out with the Checkout button.  Select Close to dismiss the Branches dialog.

To build, first select Run CMake on the Build menu and make sure the Generator is set to MinGW Generator (MinGW (x86 32bit)).  Now click the Run CMake button.  As mentioned previously, sometimes a bunch of errors occur the first time.  Trying a second time causes no errors.  If at any time there are problems running CMake, deleted every file in the qtcreator-build and try again.

There is a problem in running the regtest script in Windows XP when the build directory is under the current user directory under the C:\Documents and Settings\ directory.  The problem occurs because there are spaces in the directory name, which causes bash to incorrectly process the line.  There is no problem on Windows 7 because the user directories are under the C:\Users\ directory (which has no spaces).  There is also no problem if the build directory is under the user home directory within MSYS (again no spaces).  As for regtest.bat, this batch file requires the build to be performed in the source directory.  Also note that the new memory test script is not available on Windows.