X-Chat 2 for Windows

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Hackers Guide

This page describes X-Chat compiling/building process on Windows using Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler. Thanks to zed for making X-Chat and porting it to Windows, thus making this all possible.

Read EVERYTHING carefully. Other stuff is here.

  1. Firstly, INSTALL.w32 file in X-Chat's tarball (e. g. xchat-2.8.4.tar.bz2) is your (short) guide on compiling X-Chat for Windows.
  2. Get yourself a C compiler. X-Chat may be build with several compilers, including GCC from MinGW project, but that one lacks IPv6 headers, so we'll stick to Microsoft ones. There is a Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 which one can download freely, or you can use Visual Studio .NET one. Since I already use Visual Studio .NET for other purposes, I'll desribe the process with the latter one. Example installation options (possibly not minimal) are here.
  3. Copy C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include\io.h to unistd.h in the same directory.
  4. GTK+ is compiled with earlier version of Visual C++ compiler, thus linked to msvcrt.dll. Visual Studio .NET compiler by default links to msvcrt71.dll, which results in incompatible file handles and X-Chat crashing on connect. Backup C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\lib\msvcrt.lib and replace it with one, which forces programs to be linked to msvcrt.dll.
  5. If you want MMX-optimized background tinting, and since MMX tinting code in X-Chat (src/fe-gtk/mmx_cmod.S) is gasm code, you'll need GCC to compile it. I haven't tried this, but always used mmx_cmod.o compiled by zed.
  6. Go to http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/downloads.html and get these files or their newer versons:
    1. atk-1.12.3.zip, atk-dev-1.12.3.zip
    2. cairo-1.4.8.zip, cairo-dev-1.4.8.zip
    3. dirent.zip
    4. expat-2.0.0.zip
    5. fontconfig-2.4.2-tml-20070301.zip, fontconfig-dev-2.4.2-tml-20070301.zip
    6. freetype-2.3.4.zip, freetype-dev-2.3.4.zip
    7. gettext-0.14.5.zip, gettext-dev-0.14.5.zip
    8. glib-2.12.13.zip, glib-dev-2.12.13.zip
    9. gtk+-2.10.14.zip, gtk+-dev-2.10.14.zip
    10. jpeg-6b-4-bin.zip, jpeg-6b-4-dep.zip, jpeg-6b-4-lib.zip
    11. libiconv-1.9.1.bin.woe32.zip
    12. libpng-1.2.8-bin.zip, libpng-1.2.8-dep.zip, libpng-1.2.8-lib.zip
    13. pango-1.16.4.zip, pango-dev-1.16.4.zip
    14. pkg-config-0.20.zip
    15. tiff-3.8.2-1-bin.zip, tiff-3.8.2-1-dep.zip, tiff-3.8.2-1-lib.zip
    16. zlib123-dll.zip
  7. Extract all archives to one directory (I use D:\dev\root, and call it %ROOT%), overwriting duplicated files. Move zlib1.dll to bin directory.
  8. Get latest NASM (Win32 binary). It's needed to compile OpenSSL. Extract nasmw.exe to %ROOT%\bin directory.
  9. Get ActiveState ActivePerl, ActiveState ActivePython and/or ActiveState ActiveTcl if you plan to compile respective plugins for X-Chat, and install them (I install them to C:\Active\Perl, Python23 and Tcl directories). Perl is required to compile OpenSSL. Don't forget to check options to add directories to environment PATH variable, if available in installers. Extract dirent.lib from dirent.zip (above) to Tcl's lib directory; building Tcl plugin for X-Chat will require it.
  10. Download latest OpenSSL release, and make sure you have NASM and Perl installed. Extract, open Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt from Start menu and navigate to directory you extracted it. Run perl Configure VC-WIN32, ms\do_nasm and nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak. Copy inc32\openssl directory to %ROOT%\include directory, out32dll\*.dll to %ROOT%\bin, out32dll\*.lib and *.exp to %ROOT%\lib directory. INSTALL.W32 in tarball is your friend.
  11. Edit Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt .bat file (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat): add @set PATH=C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\bin;C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\lib;D:\dev\root\bin;D:\dev\root\lib;%PATH% to the end. It'll save you some headache later. Be sure to replace D:\dev\root with your %ROOT%.
  12. If you want IPv6 support, download tpipv6-001205.exe from Microsoft IPv6. Extract *.h files to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include directory. These headers are for Visual C++ compiler only, so GCC is not suitable if you want IPv6 support.
  13. Get cvs.exe from https://www.cvshome.org/ and run cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@xchat.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xchat co -kb -P xchat2. This way you will get X-Chat CVS sources. Don't forget to add -kb option, this way CVS won't distort line endings. Alternatively, grab latest release sources tarball and extract it.
  14. Edit config.h.win32 file to reflect current version number. Add two lines at the end of file: #define GETTEXT_PACKAGE "xchat", and #define PACKAGE_TARNAME "xchat-2.8.4".
  15. Place you GCC-compiled mmx_cmod.o (or zed's mmx_cmod.o) to src\fe-gtk directory).
  16. Edit X-Chat's src\makeinc.msc file. Uncomment OPENSSL, IPV6 and MMX defines. Add pkg-config glib-2.0 --msvc-syntax --cflags output to GLIB line, and add -ID:/dev/root/include (replace with your %ROOT%/include). Add pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --msvc-syntax --cflags output to GTK line, and pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --msvc-syntax --libs to LIBS line. Modify PERLPATH, PYTHONPATH and TCLPATH to real ones. Change libssl32.lib occurrence to ssleay32.lib.
  17. In plugins\perl\makefile.msc, link ... line, add $(LIBS) before, between or after specified .lib files.
  18. Grab my po.bat, place it in src\ and run it. It will generate .mo files (translations) with appropriate directory structure for using with gettext.
  19. Run nmake -f makefile.msc within src\, and the same in plugins\perl, python and tcl. Use your hacking skills to fix errors.
  20. Put resulting src\fe-gtk\xchat.exe to some dir, and plugins\*\*.dll's to plugins\, po\locale to locale\ dirs.
  21. Run xchat.exe and enjoy plugins and translations, and tell all your friends what have you just done.

Easy!

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Compiled by Vaidrius Petrauskas