Revision as of 11:16, 14 July 2011

Overview

This documentation provides information on how to use Swarm on Windows with MinGW compilers. The following topics will be covered:

• How to run a Swam model compiled with MinGW on Windows: Once you produce a Swarm model using MinGW (or someone gives one to you), how do you run it on other machines without installing Swarm there?
• How to use MinGW to compile your own Swarm models, either during model development or so you can distribute working models to others. This requires installing MinGW and our binary Swarm libraries.
• How to use MinGW to compile the Swarm library, in case you want to build your own Swarm binaries.

Each topic is more difficult than the one before it. However the topics are independent in that it is not necessary to know how to compile the Swarm library in order to run a pre-compiled Swarm model or compile your own model against a pre-compiled version of the library.

What is MinGW?

MinGW is a set of software that aims to provide an environment where software developed on UNIX-like systems can be easily compiled for Windows. Since Swarm is primarily developed on Linux (a UNIX clone), MinGW can ease the task of creating Swarm models that run on Windows.

MinGW is similar to the Cygwin project. The major difference is that MinGW produces executables that depend only on native Windows libraries while Cygwin executables require special compatibility libraries that are part of the Cygwin distribution.

Currently Swarm can only be used in the 32-bit version of MinGW. Hence Swarm models produced this way should run in any version of Windows but cannot have the sometimes considerable speed advantage of 64-bit execution, which is available with the gcc compiler in 64-bit Linux.

Using Swarm Models

Building Swarm Models

Installing MinGW and Swarm in Windows

• Downloads page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/
• Download and execute the setup program
• Options: Add Obj-C compiler, MSYS (which is the terminal window environment for compiling), developer toolkit (OR: just check all boxes)

• ADD SWARM

When you start MinGW32, you are in your "home" directory, which typically (in Windows XP) is: C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\(your user name) You can get to the root directory via the command "cd c:/"

Building Swarm

Required Source Code

• ZLib
• LibFFI
• LibPNG
• XPM-NoX
• Tcl
• Tk
• BLT
• HDF5 (Optional)
• Swarm

Required Tools

• MinGW
• GPerf
• Emacs

Software

ZLib

Homepage: http://www.zlib.net

Version Used: 1.2.5

License: ZLib/PNG License

LibFFI

Homepage: http://sourceware.org/libffi

Version Used: 3.0.9

License: MIT License

LibPNG

Homepage: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

Version Used: 1.5.2

License: ZLib/PNG License

XPM-NoX

Homepage: unknown

Download Area: https://build.opensuse.org/package/files?package=mingw32-xpm-nox&project=windows%3Amingw%3Awin32

Version Used: 4.2.0

License: MIT License

Tcl

Homepage: http://www.tcl.tk

Version Used: 8.4.19

License: Tcl License (Similar to MIT)

Tk

Homepage: http://www.tcl.tk

Version Used: 8.4.19

License: Tcl License (Similar to MIT)

BLT

Homepage: http://blt.sourceforge.net

Version Used: 2.4z

License: BSD License

HDF5

Homepage: http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5

Version Used: 1.8.7

License: BSD License with SZip restrictions

Swarm

Homepage: http://www.swarm.org

Version Used: 2.4.1

License: GPL

Tools

MinGW

Homepage: http://www.mingw.org

Version Used: 20110530

License: GPL

RapidEE

Homepage: http://www.rapidee.com

Version Used: 5.0

License: Freeware

Emacs

Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs

Version Used: 23.3

License: GPL

GPerf

Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/gperf/

Version Used: 3.0.1

License: GPL

Depends

Homepage: http://www.dependencywalker.com/

Version Used: 2.2

License: Freeware