Compiling Empire Server in Windows

As people ask on occasion how to compile the empire server on Windows.

Here are my notes.

There are two options to compile.

1) MinGW/MSYS

MinGW/MSYS is free compiler and linux/GNU environment. This package
produces a Windows executable and can be used on Windows machine that
does not require MinGW/MSYS to be installed. I found it tricky to get
the MinGW/MSYS to work as the development group is currently building
the next release. I had to do a few code changes to get everything to
compile and load the packages in a particular order. To make this
easier I posted a zip file from my C:\MinGW directory to Empire
Contrib v4.3.11 directory. You should just be able to extract C:
\MinGW and then you can start a shell.

Open a cmd window.
c:
cd \mingw
msys -norxvt --login
You will also need to install some additional packages: NetPbm and
PsUtils from GNU and Ghostscript. This packages are important for
HTML info generation.

Known problems:
The 'expand' program used for generation of the 'all' info file does
not exist. Microsoft has an 'expand' program on Windows system but it
performs a different function so the make does not fail but the result
for 'all' is incorrect.
The gdb is not installed in c:\mingw so there is no debugger with MinGW
\MSYS zip file. gdb can be download from the www.mingw.org site.
There are also IDEs available from www.mingw.org site.

2) Visual Studio 2005 C++ Express Edition

VS2005 Express Editions are free from Microsoft. This a full IDE.
Following the instructions at this URL at
http://www.microsoft.com/express/2005/platformsdk/default.aspx. To
use VS2005 you will need the solution and project files. I have
posted a zip file of my solution and project files in Empire Contrib
v4.3.11. I have also included the config.h, ipglob.c and path.c as I
do not use the autoconf/automake.

Known problems:
If you use this environment, you need to keep these three files up to
date manually and the solution/project files as source files are added
and removed.
If tcp_listen.c fails to compile, try undef HAVE_GETADDRINFO in
config.h in the include directory.
VS2008 does not work as there are some conflicts in the libraries that
prevent the source code from compiling when I tried it at the
beginning of December.

Currently, the MinGW/MSYS is used for an automated nightly build of
the source code. This allows Wolfpack developers to ensure their
changes compile and run in the Windows environment.

I personally use VS2005 environment for my development and testing.

If you have any questions, you can email at rkoenderink @ yahoo.ca or
post questions here.

Ron K.