Cross-compiling with CMake and Autotools
[The last time]/2010/07/introducing-chromaprint/) I needed to build a Windows binary, I found it easier to cross-compile it from Linux than to setup a development environment on a freshly installed Windows machine. The problem is that even though it's not hard, you need to remember some obscure options. Today I needed to build a new version of ISRCsubmit and I had to search for the recipe again. So, let's document it somewhere I can find it in the future...
First, you need the mingw32 package, which contains the compiler toolkit plus all the required WinAPI libraries. For cross-compiling CMake projects, you also need a file with paths to the MinGW toolkit:
set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Windows)
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER i586-mingw32msvc-gcc)
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER i586-mingw32msvc-g++)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH /usr/i586-mingw32msvc /home/lukas/projects/win32build)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY)
I have a special directory for installing compiled binaries, which makes it easier to use previously compiled libraries, so that's included in the file. To compile a Windows version of libmusicbrainz, which uses CMake, you can use a serie of command like this:
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/home/lukas/projects/mingw.cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/lukas/projects/win32build/
make
make install
To build libmusicbrainz I also needed neon, which uses autotools. Fortunately, cross-compiling autotools projects is usually also quite simple, but neon doesn't support MinGW out of the box, so one patch is necessary. After applying the patch, it can be compiled like this:
./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --disable-debug --disable-webdav --prefix=/home/lukas/projects/win32build/
make
make install