Windows Building and Packaging (old)

Information

After 15.09 release you should use Msys2: see new Windows Building and Packaging page.

Introduction

Windows does not provide a bash environment like other 'Unix' systems. Most of tools are prepackaged and downloaded from our server to make the installation as friendly as possible. All you need to install manually is the msysGit package. Then, after running two scripts, you should have a complete build environment ready.

Install required software

Download msysGit from https://git-for-windows.github.io/
Install msysGit with default options except the install directory that needs to be without spaces, e.g. C:\GIT.

Browse installation steps using left/right arrows above.

Get the code using Git Bash

Start Git Bash
Create a C:/CODE directory (no spaces in name) :

Using steps

cd ..
cd ..
mkdir code
cd code

or

mkdir c:/code  
cd c:/code

Clone repository using git command :

git clone https://bitbucket.org/librepilot/librepilot.git

Go into librepilot directory just created using git clone and check out the "next" source code branch, you can choose any other like "master" or "rel-15.09"

cd librepilot
git checkout next

Install Windows tools

Some tools are needed : make and 7za (7-Zip)

run the following script :

make/scripts/win_sdk_install.sh

make command

Tired of typing tools/bin/make every time?

The following command will add /C/code/librepilot/tools/bin to your PATH:

echo "export PATH=\"\$PATH:/C/code/librepilot/tools/bin\"" >> ~/.profile

You should adapt it to match your librepilot directory...

After issuing the above command, you'll need to exit the current shell and start a new one for it to take effect.

The rest of the document assumes that you have done this step (and we really recommend that you do it).

Install the toolchain

The toolchain is used to build the software:

Using make freshly installed in previous step:

make all_sdk_install

This can take a while, fast internet connection preferred !

Tool	Approx. size	Used for
Arm compiler	~94Mb	firmware build
Qt installer	~855Mb	GCS build
SDL	~800Kb	GCS build
Nsis	~2,1Mb	Windows installer
Mesa	~13Mb	OpenGL soft driver
Open-ssl	~1,8Mb
ccache	~350Kb	Build faster
gtest	~1,1Mb
uncrustify	~250Kb	Format code
doxygen	~4Mb	Documentation

Ccache issue

With the latest msysGIT version there are some issues with ccache install and ccache can be disabled as follows :

make[1]: *** [install] Error 3
make[1]: Leaving directory 'C:/code/librepilot/build/ccache-3.2.2'
C:/code/librepilot/make/tools.mk:1011: recipe for target 'ccache_install' failed
make: *** [ccache_install] Error 2

Edit the file make/tools.mk and find this line:

BUILD_SDK_TARGETS += osg sdl nsis mesawin openssl ccache

Comment ccache target with a "#"

BUILD_SDK_TARGETS += osg sdl nsis mesawin openssl #ccache

Building the LibrePilot software

Basically you just need to type:

make package

See also the Make basics page and learn more about 'make' commands

It will build the UAVObjGenerator utility and all firmwares:

Then GCS software:

Finally all files are packaged using the Nsis software installer.

At end, the LibrePilot software installer can be found in C:\code\librepilot\build\ directory.

Congrats !

Congratulations! You have setup the build environment and built the complete LibrePilot software suite!