学步园

[How to compile NSPR by MinGW?]

[What’s the NSPR?]

Before
introducing HOWTO, we must understand what the NSPR is. It is an abbreviation
of Netscape Portable Runtime, and provides threads, thread pool, garbage
collector, mutex, condition variable, etc, that are independent on the specific
platforms. In short, it is a lib of platform-neutral APIs to hide the gaps of
operation system. The figure 1-1 show its relationships among program and OS.

Figure
1-1 The Layer of NSPR

The friend Documentation
and Training
or The NSPR Reference
are available in the mozilla.org
website, and readers can understand it deeply after investigation.

[Where to download the latest source codes of NSPR?]

The latest source code is nspr-4.7.3.tar.gz
when I writing this article. If you like following the newer, please recheck
the nspr’s
release folder
. Yeah, do you think that I am too verbose. Ok, let’s
introduce how to compile it now.

[How to compile the source codes of NSPR?]

1. Download
and Install MinGW in Window.
Please refer to the part of FFmpeg
Understanding(3. How to compile FFMPEG in Windows?)
.

2. Download
nspr-4.7.3.tar.gz

.
It is a slow FTP server, so please keep patient even if you become depressed.

3.
Uncompress it in your appropriate folder.

4. Make
sure what options are available by configure.

5. Configure
it in terms of your requirements.
Herein, I give a sample for reference.

If your system is Windows95/98/Me, please
guarantee –enable-win32-target=WIN95
.
There are some crazy users use win3.1 or win3.2, then please set –enable-win32-target=WIN16
.
I am interested whether somebody is using them now?!

6. Make
it after finishing successfully.

What
have happen?

If you are lucky man, please skip step
7. In my pc, “nsinstall: Command not found” is printed as error information.
Please refer to step7 to overcome it: -).

7. Download
moztools-static.zip

,
and extract ‘moztools/bin/nsinstall.exe’ into ‘/mingw/bin’. Please remake it.

What
have happen?

WOW, I lose my temper, and say “TMDzzNNDzzXdujdidkqqIsmVVs”!
After several minute, I become clam. I MUST make it successful in my mind!

8. Probe
the root cause!

Debug


1) Check link.exe

Ok, it is not a proper linking position! As
you know, we must use MS’s Linkage.

Debug


2) Where is link.exe of MS?

Ok, we find the path of MS’s link.exe.

Debug


3) Check the order of the environment variable “PATH’

Ok, the order is wrong, we must reorder it!

Debug


4) Open /etc/profile to reorder PATH. Comment the
original line in 19^th
and use the modified line in 20^th
.

Debug


5) Save /etc/profile and exit MinGW.

Debug


6) Open new MinGW to make it.

In fact, Debug 4)5)6)

is not a
good way to do that, because it will take side-effects later. For example, when
you want to use MinGW’s ‘find’ command, system will use windows’ one. Please
check the following command in your system to confirm whether it is true: -).

As
the result, I prefer to the following solution

Step
1: Copy VC’s link to /bin folder and rename to vc_link.exe.

Step
2:Edit ./config/autoconf.mk and modify link to vc_link in the 62th..

Step3:
Save ./config/autoconf.mk

Step4:
Make it

9. Check
whether dist

folder has shared and static libs

ARE YOU OK NOW?! Yes, I am a bit tired.
Open-source often makes me sleep deeply at night: -)!

[Summarization]

1. It is very important to build a proper
building environment. Rich tools can help find the root-cause and save time.

2. Analyze the error information when having
troubles. It is an key factor to decide whether you can overcome it.

3. Believe that release version must be OK,
and the failure is brought about by yourself. In the critical points, Google
maybe is your teacher: -).

With regards to the limited time, the
article only shows the partial options for NSPR, others will be explored later.

[Appendix]

If you have met any troubles when compiling source codes by linking the libs of NSPR, please refer to How to solve the linking errors when using the ATOMIC functions
.