2.4 Microsoft Windows

When compiling on Microsoft Windows, the range of different compilers and lack of a standard powerful scripting language make it difficult to provide a genuinely portable infrastructure to the package. However, the task of compiling and installing the library is not complicated, and easy to achieve by hand. The following steps are necessary:

• Create the file ringing/common-ac.h by editing common-ac.h.in to reflect the characteristics of your C++ compiler;
• Compile all the .cpp source files in the ringing subdirectory into a library, which you will probably want to call ringing.lib;
• Install the compiled library and the header files in places where your compiler and linker will be able to find them;
• Optionally, install and run the tests in the tests subdirectory.
• Copy the documentation to somewhere permanent.
• If desired, compile and install the utilities in the apps subdirectory.

Note that the header files are designed to be included from a subdirectory called ringing within your system's collection of header files.

If you wish to compile only the part of the library which is licensed for use in commercial programs, make sure you only compile and link those files which explicitly state that they are under the Lesser GNU Public License LGPL. See Licensing.

If you are using Microsoft Developer Studio, then you can use the supplied workspace file ringing-lib.dsw to accomplish the compiling and linking of the library without any effort. In addition, with the Microsoft Visual Studio compiler you do not need to edit ringing/common-ac.h by hand: there is a ready-customised version, called common-msvc.h, which will be found and used automatically.

Currently the class library should normally be compiled into a static library (.lib file). It is not yet straightforward to make the library into a DLL; if you choose to do this, you are on your own but the authors would be please to hear of any success.