windows compilation

[nniippsseell-source]

I'm trying to get a working version of my DPF plugin under windows.
So i'm cross-compiling under debian 13 using mingw-w64

I came up with the following build command :

make WIN32=true \
     CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc \
     CXX=x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ \
     AR=x86_64-w64-mingw32-ar \
     STRIP=x86_64-w64-mingw32-strip \
     HAVE_CAIRO=true \
     CAIRO_FLAGS="-I$HOME/mingw-cairo/mingw64/include -I$HOME/mingw-cairo/mingw64/include/cairo -DCAIRO_WIN32_STATIC_BUILD" \
     CAIRO_LIBS="-L$HOME/mingw-cairo/mingw64/lib -lcairo -lpixman-1 -lpng -lfreetype -lharfbuzz -lgraphite2 -lfontconfig -lexpat -lbrotlidec -lbrotlicommon -lbz2 -lz -lfreetype -lole32 -luuid -ldwrite -lwindowscodecs -lrpcrt4 -lgdi32 -lmsimg32 -ld2d1" \
     LDFLAGS="-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++"

I did download the packages in $HOME/mingw-cairo from https://repo.msys2.org/mingw/mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64...

So what i get for now:

• the standalone, the exe works fine, the ui displays fine.
• the vst3 version works in various vst3 hosts (produces sound) as long as i do not show the gui; then it does crash the plugin ... and the host.

Plugin sources : https://codeberg.org/rubberplayer/reconnie

Any pointer would be appreciated !

[falkTX]

where did you get cairo? you cant use it as shared lib on a plugin, as it won't be available in the host or it might conflict with stuff used by the host.

You can make use of https://github.com/DISTRHO/PawPaw to build all typical plugin dependencies as static libraries, making them suitable for plugins.

[falkTX]

All the dependencies there... are they all static? I would be suspicious of that first. Unless you build everything statically for making your plugin self-contained, you can expect issues.
Plugins loading global resources (installed shared libs) is typically bad behaviour. The only shared libs you can rely on are the ones provided by the system, so in this case windows dlls. Everything else must be compiled in the plugin.

Perhaps see https://github.com/brummer10/ToneTwistPlugs as an example, uses cairo with dpf and works under windows

[nniippsseell-source]

where did you get cairo?

As i wrote above: I did download the packages in $HOME/mingw-cairo from https://repo.msys2.org/mingw/mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64

Everything is built statically. The standalone win version GUI works fine without any "extra" dll. The VST3 also has all built in. It only crashes when i try to bring up the GUI. sound works fine without that.

I'll try to start from scratch by extracting relevant parts of your distrho/dpf-makefile-action@v1 that Brummer directly uses.

Thanks for the link !

[falkTX]

I didnt know mingw did static builds too, that is nice.

can you use a debugger? its going to be a mess to investigate this otherwise.

do they work fine under Linux?

[nniippsseell-source]

Quick follow-up:

The Windows bug (now fixed) was caused by a corruption issue completely unrelated to DPH or any of its dependencies.

I ran into a few difficulties getting PawPaw to produce a debuggable DLL. Running make DEBUG=true wasn’t enough because (as far as I can tell) PawPaw does adds --strip-all to LDFLAGS.

Aside from that, PawPaw is really easy to use (ideally in a VM, since it installs quite a few packages).

Thanks for you help and your great framework !