Building wxFormBuilder From Source on Windows

Purpose

Instruct new users and developers on how to properly build the wxFormBuilder project. wxFormBuilder uses Premake as its primary build system. Premake is a build script generator, so you will notice that wxFormBuilder does not come with any build files only 'premake.lua' files. This is by design and you use Premake, for your platform, to generate the build files of your choice. There is a batch script that you can run to generate makefiles and Code::Blocks projects.

REMEMBER: The only way to get new additions and updates to the build files is to run Premake. This means that it is good practice to run Premake before starting to build or develop wxFormBuilder.

Prerequisites

  • Get MinGW 5.1.3 gcc 3.4.5 (candidate) installer.
  • Get MSYS v1.0.11 build environment. (Only used for makefile builds)

wxFormBuilder Build Steps

  1. Get the wxPack or build wxWidgets yourself with MinGW. You'll need unicode dlls built with gcc.
  2. Install MinGW 5.1.3 gcc 3.4.5.
    Choose candidate and be sure to select g++ and MinGW-make because it is normally unchecked during the install. For this tutorial I am going to assume you are installing it to C:\MinGW.
  3. Install MSYS v1.0.11.
    Just install this with the default settings.
  4. Make sure you define an environment variable of WXWIN. Set it to the root of your wxWidgets installation (e.g. C:\devel\wxWidgets).
  5. Get the source code from the Subversion repository. You can use the commandline svn or use TortoiseSVN

    TortoiseSVN:
    Using TortoiseSVN, make a folder where you want to store the sources, right-click on the folder, and select "SVN Checkout...".

    In the dialog that opens, enter:
    Version 3.0:
    https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/tags/3.0
    Current Development:
    https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/trunk
    press OK.

    svn Commandline:
    Version 3.0:
    svn co https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/tags/3.0 wxformbuilder
    Current Development:
    svn co https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/trunk wxformbuilder

  6. Use the included batch scripts to create the build files.

    create_build_files.bat

  7. Use the generated build files to build wxFormBuilder.

    Code::Blocks:
    Use the generated wxFormBuilder.workspace to build wxFormBuilder.

    GNU makefiles type: (Assumes you have properly setup your system to build with gcc or MinGW)
    Launch MSYS and change directory to the wxFormBuilder directory.

    Release:
    make
    Debug:
    make CONFIG=Debug

Includes

  • wxFormBuilder
  • wxFormBuilder SDK
  • wxFormBuilder 3rd Party Controls

Notes