Building wxFormBuilder From Source

Purpose

Instruct new users and developer on how to properly build the wxFormBuilder project. wxFormBuilder uses Premake as it's 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 set of batch/shell scripts that you can run that will automatically 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 is means that it is good practice to run Premake before starting to build or develop wxFormBuilder.

wxFormBuilder Build Steps

  1. Follow the guide here to build wxWidgets or get the wxPack.
  2. If you're using Windows, make sure you define an environment variable of WXWIN. Set it to the root of your wxWidgets installation. You can ignore this set if you are only going to use Code::Blocks to develop wxFormBuilder. (ie. C:\devel\wxWidgets)
  3. If you're using Linux, make sure that wx-config is setup properly.
  4. 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:
    Current Development:
    https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/trunk
    Version 3.0 Beta2:
    https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/tags/beta2
    press OK.

    svn Commandline:
    Current Development:
    svn co https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/trunk wxformbuilder
    Version 3.0 Beta2:
    svn co https://wxformbuilder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wxformbuilder/3.x/tags/beta2 wxformbuilder

  5. There are included batch/sh scripts that you can use to simplify creating the build files. You can skip the next step if you use those.

    Windows:
    create_build_files.bat
    Linux:
    >$bash create_build_files.sh

  6. To manually create the needed build files type:

    Code::Blocks Projects and workspace:
    Windows:
    premake\premake-win32.exe --target cb-gcc --with-wx-shared [--unicode]
    Linux:
    premake/premake-linux --target cb-gcc --with-wx-shared [--unicode]

    GNU makefiles:
    Windows:
    premake\premake-win32.exe --target gnu --with-wx-shared [--unicode]
    Linux:
    premake/premake-linux --target gnu --with-wx-shared [--unicode]

  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)
    Release:
    make CONFIG=Release
    Debug:
    make

Includes

  • wxFormBuilder
  • wxFormBuilder SDK
  • wxFormBuilder 3rd Party Controls

Notes