[mapserver-users] Help with compiling on Windows?

[Frank Nelson]

Hello,
I'm new to MapServer and at this point I'm still evaluating it.  So far I'm 
very impressed.  However, one of the key items I need to evaluate is its WMS 
Client capabilities.  I'm currently using the binaries on Windows 2000 that 
I downloaded from the homepage.  Per the instructions, I executed "mapserv 
-v" to check out what capabilites it was compiled with.  WMS Server is in 
there, but not WMS Client.  So I thought, no big deal, I'll just recompile 
it and turn on WMS Client.  I didn't know what I was getting myself into!!! 
I'm not a C programmer.  I've followed instructions, searched mailing list 
archives and 3 days later I don't feel like I'm getting any closer.  It 
seems that compiling MapServer itself is straight forward as there is 
documentation and a VC++ makefile.  However it is all the supporting 
libraries that I'm having problems with... and it looks like the regex 
library wasn't even meant to compile on windows.  I think it would've been 
very helpful if, whoever compiled those binares for windows, also made 
available the source that was compiled.. even without documenation.  Then I 
could learn by looking at the changes that were made in order to compile on 
Windows.
I need all the help I can get but I don't expect anyone to spend tremendous 
amounts of time with me.  So maybe, at a minimum I could get someone who has 
successfully compiled version 3.5 on Windows to jot down a few clues. Some 
sample questions I have are..
My understanding is that I need to get ZLib, FreeType and LibPNG copmiled 
first.  Then those three will be used to in the GD compiling process.  Then 
all of the above will be used in the MapServer compiling process.... am I on 
the right track?
Regardless, I can't get anything other than PROJ4 to compile.  For those 
libraries that don't have a Makefile.vc that I can't use VC++ on, what do I 
use to compile?  I downloaded a gcc compiler that has the "make" command, 
but that doesn't seem to work on any of the makefiles and gcc compiles .c 
files into .exe's when I really need .lib's...
I think I could get MapServer compiled if I could just get all these 
supporting libraries how they need to be.

I don't expect anyone to answer ALL my question, but any little bit of 
information would be GREATLY appreciated!!



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