Max Berger

After you have downloaded wxWidgets, you need to compile it for your environment. This takes a while, so start it and then go get lunch.

You will have to use the MSYS window. You can find it in (Start / Programs / MSys / MSYS). This is a Unix-like environment in your windows computer.

Figure 5. The MSYS window

Change to your wxWidgets directory:

cd $WXWIN

The yellow/orange part should show something like: /c/wxWidgets-2.6.3. If that is not the case, make sure you've logged out and back in.

Next, configure wxWidgets for your system. Type (all in one line!):

./configure --enable-optimise --enable-stl --enable-unicode 
  --disable-threads --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-monolithic

This takes a short while (on current computers about 5 minutes). So only grab a quick coke. It displays a lot, including warnings. It is very safe to just ignore those. When it is done it should show something like this (your output may be slightly different):

Configured wxWidgets 2.6.3 for `i686-pc-mingw32'

  Which GUI toolkit should wxWidgets use?                 msw
  Should wxWidgets be compiled into single library?       yes
  Should wxWidgets be compiled in debug mode?             no
  Should wxWidgets be linked as a shared library?         no
  Should wxWidgets be compiled in Unicode mode?           yes
  What level of wxWidgets compatibility should be enabled?
                                       wxWidgets 2.2      no
                                       wxWidgets 2.4      yes
  Which libraries should wxWidgets use?
                                       jpeg               builtin
                                       png                builtin
                                       regex              builtin
                                       tiff               builtin
                                       zlib               builtin
                                       odbc               no
                                       expat              builtin
                                       libmspack          no
                                       sdl                no
                                       gnomeprint         no
                                       hildon             no

Now compile wxWidgets by running make:

make

This takes a long time (between 20 minutes and 1 hour on modern systems) and has lots of output. Don't wait for it. Go do something else in the mean time.