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How to build the xPack Windows Build Tools binaries

Introduction

This project also includes the scripts and additional files required to build and publish the xPack Windows Build Tools binaries.

The build scripts use the xPack Build Box (XBB), a set of elaborate build environments based on recent GCC versions (Docker containers for GNU/Linux and Windows or a custom folder for MacOS).

There are two types of builds:

  • local/native builds, which use the tools available on the host machine; generally the binaries do not run on a different system distribution/version; intended mostly for development purposes;
  • distribution builds, which create the archives distributed as binaries; expected to run on most modern systems.

This page documents the distribution builds.

For native builds, see the build-native.sh script.

Repositories

The build scripts use the first repo; to merge changes from upstream it is necessary to add a remote named upstream, and merge the upstream/master into the local master.

Branches

  • xpack - the updated content, used during builds
  • xpack-develop - the updated content, used during development
  • master - no content

Download the build scripts

The build scripts are available in the scripts folder of the xpack-dev-tools/windows-build-tools-xpack Git repo.

To download them, issue the following commands:

rm -rf ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git; \
git clone https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/windows-build-tools-xpack.git \
  ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git; \
git -C ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git submodule update --init --recursive

Note: the repository uses submodules; for a successful build it is mandatory to recurse the submodules.

For development purposes, clone the xpack-develop branch:

rm -rf ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git; \
git clone \
  --branch xpack-develop \
  https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/windows-build-tools-xpack.git \
  ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git; \
git -C ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git submodule update --init --recursive

The Work folder

The scripts create a temporary build Work/windows-build-tools-${version} folder in the user home. Although not recommended, if for any reasons you need to change the location of the Work folder, you can redefine WORK_FOLDER_PATH variable before invoking the script.

Spaces in folder names

Due to the limitations of make, builds started in folders with spaces in names are known to fail.

If on your system the work folder is in such a location, redefine it in a folder without spaces and set the WORK_FOLDER_PATH variable before invoking the script.

Customizations

There are many other settings that can be redefined via environment variables. If necessary, place them in a file and pass it via --env-file. This file is either passed to Docker or sourced to shell. The Docker syntax is not identical to shell, so some files may not be accepted by bash.

Versioning

The version string is an extension to semver, the format looks like 4.3.0-1. It includes the three digits with the original GNU make version and a fourth digit with the xPack release number.

When publishing on the npmjs.com server, a fifth digit is appended.

Changes

Compared to the original Windows Build Tools distribution, there should be no functional changes.

The actual changes for each version are documented in the release web pages.

How to build local/native binaries

README-DEVELOP.md

The details on how to prepare the development environment for Windows Build Tools are in the README-DEVELOP.md file.

How to build distributions

Build

The builds currently run on a dedicated machines (Intel GNU/Linux).

Build the Windows binaries

The current platform for Windows production builds is a Debian 10, running on an Intel NUC8i7BEH mini PC with 32 GB of RAM and 512 GB of fast M.2 SSD. The machine name is xbbli.

caffeinate ssh xbbli

Before starting a build, check if Docker is started:

docker info

Before running a build for the first time, it is recommended to preload the docker images.

bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh preload-images

The result should look similar to:

$ docker images
REPOSITORY          TAG                    IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ilegeul/ubuntu      i386-12.04-xbb-v3.3    35fb0236572c        23 hours ago        5GB
ilegeul/ubuntu      amd64-12.04-xbb-v3.3   1c4ba2e7e87e        29 hours ago        5.43GB

It is also recommended to Remove unused Docker space. This is mostly useful after failed builds, during development, when dangling images may be left by Docker.

To check the content of a Docker image:

docker run --interactive --tty ilegeul/ubuntu:amd64-12.04-xbb-v3.3

To remove unused files:

docker system prune --force

Since the build takes a while, use screen to isolate the build session from unexpected events, like a broken network connection or a computer entering sleep.

screen -S windows-build-tools

sudo rm -rf ~/Work/windows-build-tools-*
bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh --develop --all

or, for development builds:

sudo rm -rf ~/Work/windows-build-tools-*
bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh --develop --without-pdf --without-html --disable-tests --win64 --win32

To detach from the session, use Ctrl-a Ctrl-d; to reattach use screen -r windows-build-tools; to kill the session use Ctrl-a Ctrl-k and confirm.

Several minutes later, the output of the build script is a set of 2 archives and their SHA signatures, created in the deploy folder:

$ ls -l ~/Work/windows-build-tools-*/deploy
total 3556
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ilg ilg 1700582 Jul 14 11:26 xpack-windows-build-tools-4.3.0-1-win32-x32.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ilg ilg     113 Jul 14 11:26 xpack-windows-build-tools-4.3.0-1-win32-x32.zip.sha
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ilg ilg 1926825 Jul 14 11:25 xpack-windows-build-tools-4.3.0-1-win32-x64.zip
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ilg ilg     113 Jul 14 11:25 xpack-windows-build-tools-4.3.0-1-win32-x64.zip.sha

Subsequent runs

Separate platform specific builds

Instead of --all, you can use any combination of:

--win32 --win64

clean

To remove most build temporary files, use:

bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh --all clean

To also remove the library build temporary files, use:

bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh --all cleanlibs

To remove all temporary files, use:

bash ${HOME}/Work/windows-build-tools-xpack.git/scripts/helper/build.sh --all cleanall

Instead of --all, any combination of --win32 --win64 will remove the more specific folders.

For production builds it is recommended to completely remove the build folder:

rm -rf ~/Work/windows-build-tools-*

--develop

For performance reasons, the actual build folders are internal to each Docker run, and are not persistent. This gives the best speed, but has the disadvantage that interrupted builds cannot be resumed.

For development builds, it is possible to define the build folders in the host file system, and resume an interrupted build.

In addition, the builds are more verbose.

--debug

For development builds, it is also possible to create everything with -g -O0 and be able to run debug sessions.

--jobs

By default, the build steps use all available cores. If, for any reason, parallel builds fail, it is possible to reduce the load.

Interrupted builds

The Docker scripts may run with root privileges. This is generally not a problem, since at the end of the script the output files are reassigned to the actual user.

However, for an interrupted build, this step is skipped, and files in the install folder will remain owned by root. Thus, before removing the build folder, it might be necessary to run a recursive chown.

Testing

A simple test is performed by the script at the end, by launching the executable to check if all shared/dynamic libraries are correctly used.

For a true test you need to build some Eclipse projects.

Installed folders

After install, the package should create a structure like this (only the first two depth levels are shown):

xPacks/@xpack-dev-tools/windows-build-tools/4.3.0-1/.content/
├── README.md
├── bin
│   ├── busybox.exe
│   ├── cp.exe
│   ├── echo.exe
│   ├── make.exe
│   ├── mkdir.exe
│   ├── rm.exe
│   └── sh.exe
├── distro-info
│   ├── CHANGELOG.md
│   ├── licenses
│   ├── patches
│   └── scripts
├── include
│   └── gnumake.h
└── share
    ├── info
    └── man

9 directories, 10 files

No other files are installed in any system folders or other locations.

Uninstall

The binaries are distributed as portable archives; thus they do not need to run a setup and do not require an uninstall; simply removing the folder is enough.

Files cache

The XBB build scripts use a local cache such that files are downloaded only during the first run, later runs being able to use the cached files.

However, occasionally some servers may not be available, and the builds may fail.

The workaround is to manually download the files from an alternate location (like https://github.com/xpack-dev-tools/files-cache/tree/master/libs), place them in the XBB cache (Work/cache) and restart the build.

More build details

The build process is split into several scripts. The build starts on the host, with build.sh, which runs container-build.sh several times, once for each target, in one of the two docker containers. Both scripts include several other helper scripts. The entire process is quite complex, and an attempt to explain its functionality in a few words would not be realistic. Thus, the authoritative source of details remains the source code.