Windows installation instructions

[ms609]

I've spent the afternoon trying to compile Windows binaries (cf. #31); the below instructions got me there, after replacing the non-portable function strcasecmp with strcmp (dangerously..?), per #40 .

[jtklein]

Can you share the binaries?

[ms609]

Sure thing, here's the zipped .exe:
modeltest-ng.zip

[jtklein]

Thank you for the shared binaries.

I have tried to run the "modeltest-ng.exe" from cmd but I get an error trying to call the exe. A pop up window that says, System error: “The program can't start because msys-2.0.dll is missing from your computer”

I have tested on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Maybe this could help to include the dll into the .exe:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45144542/why-do-i-get-the-error-the-program-cant-start-because-msys-2-0-dll-is-missing

I do not have any experience with compiling for Windows, so I have no idea for what to do.

[ms609]

I run Windows 10; I suspect that there might be a number of issues attempting to run a Win10 binary on Win7. Copying and pasting .DLLs is generally not a very promising way to go!

[jtklein]

Thank you for your reply.
In the meantime I have also tested the .exe on a Windows 10 laptop, but there the exe does not run from cmd as well.
There is no error message thrown, it seems like the program is executed normally, but there is just no output to the command line. Also -v or --version gives no output.

[ms609]

Probably your best bet is to compile the binaries yourself... it's not as complicated as I thought it might be! I just followed the instructions in the README file and replaced the strings in the source files as detailed in #40.

[ddarriba]

Thank you for the pull request. I didn't know MSYS before (I am not a Windows user), but it worked well. However, after installing the packages it worked just running

$ mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make

Is there a reason to build the libraries independently?
Also, do you know if it would be possible to build the GUI for Windows? Adding "-DUSEGUI=ON" to make should be enough, but I cannot find the right packages for QT5.