File: docs/README.WIN32 Last updated: Jun 02, 2005 - Karl Schultz - kschultz@users.sourceforge.net Quick Start ----- ----- Unzip both ZIP files (MesaLib and MesaDemos) into the same directory. The libs and demos build separately, so if you do not care about the demos, you do not have to unzip that zip file. But if you do, it does need to be unzipped into the same directory as the lib zip file because the demos depend on the libs. The Windows build system uses Microsoft Visual Studio. Project files for a specific version of Visual Studio are in their own directory in the top-level "windows" directory. For example, Visual Studio 6 files are in windows/VC6. If a directory does not exist for your version of Visual Studio, you can try importing the project files from an earlier version of Visual Studio. At this time, project files exist for Version 6. The project files to build the core Mesa library, Windows Mesa drivers, OSMesa, and GLU are in the mesa directory. The project files to build GLUT and some demo programs are in the progs directory. Makefiles are no longer shipped or supported, but can be generated from the projects using Visual Studio. Windows Drivers ------- ------- At this time, only the GDI driver is known to work, as it has been ported and rewritten to the latest Mesa DD interfaces. Source code also exists in the tree for other drivers in src/mesa/drivers/windows, but the status of this code is unknown. The GDI driver operates basically by writing pixel spans into a DIB section and then blitting the DIB to the window. The driver was recently cleaned up and rewitten and so may have bugs or may be missing some functionality. The older versions of the CVS source may be useful in figuring out any problems, or report them to me. To build Mesa with the GDI driver, build the mesa, gdi, and glu projects in the Visual Studio workspace found at windows/VC?/mesa/mesa.dsw. The osmesa DLL can also be built with the osmesa project. The build system creates a lib top-level directory and copies resulting LIB and DLL files to this lib directory. The files are: OPENGL32.LIB, GLU32.LIB, OSMESA32.LIB OPENGL32.DLL, GLU32.DLL, OSMESA32.DLL If the MesaDemos ZIP file was extracted, the DLL files are also copied to the demos directory. GLUT and Demos ---- --- ----- A Visual Studio workspace can be found at windows/VC?/progs/progs.dsw. It can be used to build GLUT and a few demos. The GLUT lib and DLL are copied to the top-level lib directory, along with the Mesa libs. The demo build system expects to find the LIB files in the top level lib directory, so you must build the Mesa libs first. The demo executables are placed in the demos directory, because some of them rely on data files found there. Also, the Mesa lib DLL's were copied there by the Mesa lib build process. Therefore, you should be able to simply run the demo executables from the demo directory. Build System Notes ----- ------ ----- VC6 --- Visual Studio 6 does not recognize files with the .cc extension as C++ language files, without a lot of unnatural tweaking. So, the VC6 build process uses custom build steps to compile these files in the GLU library. VC7 --- Some users have reported problems building glu with VC7 after importing and converting the VC6 project files. The problem is caused by a custom build step that was put in place to work around a problem with VC6 not recognizing .cc files as C++ source files. It appears that VC7 can be configured to recognize .cc files as C++ files and so it compiles these glu files with the default settings, and does not use settings that are required to compile the files correctly. The easiest way to solve the problem is to remove the .cc files from the glu project. This does not delete the files, but removes them from the project so that VS does not try to compile them at all. This allows the custom build step to compile the files with the proper settings. Another approach is to remove the custom build step and fix the project up to compile the files normally. General ------- After building, you can copy the above DLL files to a place in your PATH such as $SystemRoot/SYSTEM32. If you don't like putting things in a system directory, place them in the same directory as the executable(s). Be careful about accidentially overwriting files of the same name in the SYSTEM32 directory. The DLL files are built so that the external entry points use the stdcall calling convention. Static LIB files are not built. The LIB files that are built with are the linker import files associated with the DLL files. The si-glu sources are used to build the GLU libs. This was done mainly to get the better tessellator code. To build "mangled" Mesa, add the preprocessor define USE_MGL_NAMESPACE to the project settings. You will also need to edit src/mesa.def to change all the gl* symbols to mgl*. Because this is easy to do with a global replace operation in a text editor, no additional mangled version of mesa.def is maintained or shipped. If you have a Windows-related build problem or question, it is probably better to direct it to me (kschultz@users.sourceforge.net), rather than directly to the other Mesa developers. I will help you as much as I can. I also monitor the Mesa mailing lists and will answer questions in this area there as well. Karl Schultz