Building for Windows (alternate) - metaeducation/ren-cpp GitHub Wiki

(This is an alternate set of build instructions for Ren Garden on Windows)

Growing Ren Garden from Seed on Windows

  • Install GitHub Desktop (https://desktop.github.com/)
  • Create a directory where you’re going to build everything eg. C:\r3
  • From https://github.com/metaeducation/ren-c select the "Clone in Desktop" and let it run the GitHub Desktop. Select c:\r3 as the location for the clone
  • From https://github.com/metaeducation/ren-cpp select the “Clone in Desktop” and let it run the GitHub Desktop. Select c:\r3 as the location for the clone
  • You now have two directories under c:\r3, viz: c:\r3\ren-c and c:\r3\ren-cpp. Rename c:\r3\ren-c to c:\r3\rebol
  • From http://www.rebolsource.net/ download the Win32 x86 binary and place it into c:\r3\rebol\make and rename it to r3-make.exe

We now need the mingw compiler, cmake, and Qt

  • CMake – download the win32 installer from https://cmake.org/download/ and install it eg. cmake-3.3.2-win32-x86
  • Qt Creator – download the Qt online installer from http://www.qt.io/download-open-source/ eg. qt-unified-windows-x86-2.0.2-2-online.exe
  • Run the Qt Creator. You’ll be prompted to create a Qt account, or to login to an existing account
  • Install to c:\qt
  • Select only Qt/5.5 or whatever is latest
  • And Qt/Tools/MinGW 4.9.2 or whatever is latest

Then finish the installation, which will take sometime if you have a slow internet connection

  • Search for Qt 5.5 for Desktop using the Windows search, or under Programs or Apps/Qt, and use this console instead of the Windows command console ( which doesn’t have the path set for the make binary)
  • Cd to c:\r3\rebol\make
  • Type mingw32-make –f makefile.boot and after a minute or so you’ll end up with a r3.exe and a lot of *.o files in the make\objs directory. These files are used by Qt Creator to link Rebol as a library to Qt.
  • Open up Qt Creator, click on the “Open Project” button on the middle right of the screen, and navigate to c:\r3\ren-ccp\MakeLists.txt
  • Allow it to create a directory c:\r3\ren-cpp-build

It now asks for arguments for CMake. Use:

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DRUNTIME=rebol -DCLASSLIB_QT=1 -DGARDEN=yes

You should end up with a message

Build files have been written to: C:/r3/ren-cpp-build
  • Click on Finish

You should end up with a vertical icon bar on the left where the bottom 4 icons are a computer labelled rencpp, a green play button, a green play button with a bug on it, and a hammer

  • Click on the computer icon, and in the Open Documents section next to the icon bar, you’ll see a title bar with "Run" and then 5 document names of which "workbench" is the last.
  • Click on the "workbench" document, and double click on the green play button

You'll see a number of issues appearing, and with luck, if you watch the "compile out" tab at the bottom, it’ll progress from 0% to 100%, and the workbench will be built in

C:\r3\ren-cpp-build\examples\workbench