Building and Installing libffi on Windows - FWD - Golden Code Redmine

Building and Installing `libffi` on Windows¶

On Windows, the libffi-6.dll library needs to be built from source code. An installed and working MinGW (32-bit or 64-bit, depending on Windows OS) is required. After downloading the source code it is required to compile it with MinGW for the required target architecture. It is possible to build 64-bit binaries on 32-bit Windows.

Follow these steps to build and install libffi:

Download the MSYS(32-bit) utilities from https://proj.goldencode.com/downloads/mingw/msys32_20111123.zip (the original code was found at the sourceforge msys page and details about the utilities can be seen in http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS)
Unpack MSYS to a desired location. No special installation required. The commands below assume the MSYS package is unpacked into c:\msys. In case of using another directory correct the MSYS usage commands accordingly.
The libffi source code can be found at http://sourceware.org/libffi/. The specific version used by FWD can also be found at https://proj.goldencode.com/downloads/libffi/libffi_3.2.1_sources.zip.
Unpack the libffi sources (e.g. if there is JDK installed jar xf libffi_3.2.1_sources.zip).
Run MSYS shell - msys.bat from \msys directory. Inside opened MSYS shell:
- Go to the libffi sources, for example: cd c:\libffi-3.2.1
- Prepare target build config:
  32 bit: sh ./configure
  or
  64 bit: sh ./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32
  
  The explicit architecture specification is mandatory for 64-bit Windows (and installed 64-bit MinGW). The reason is the MSYS is a 32-bit package and by default it cannot build a valid configuration for the 64-bit compiler.
- Run make
After a successful build, these binaries and include files are created:
32 bit: libffi-(root)/i686-pc-mingw32/.libs and libffi-(root)/i686-pc-mingw32/include
64 bit: libffi-(root)/x86_64-w64-mingw32/.libs and libffi-(root)/x86_64-w64-mingw32/include
Copy the headers and libraries to the corresponding MinGW folders. Copy the .dll files to the system dll directory (the directory where Windows stores commonly used dll, usually %windir%\system32\). The include files and libraries will be used in FWD native code compilation and the dlls are used at runtime to load P2J.DLL code:
- Include files
  32-bit: copy libffi-(root)\i686-pc-mingw32\include\*.h \mingw32\i686-w64-mingw32\include\
  64-bit: copy libffi-(root)\x86_64-w64-mingw32\include\*.h \mingw64\x86_64-w64-mingw32\include\
- Link libraries
  32-bit: copy libffi-(root)\i686-pc-mingw32\.libs\libffi*.*a* \mingw32\i686-w64-mingw32\lib\
  64-bit: copy libffi-(root)\x86_64-w64-mingw32\.libs\libffi*.*a* \mingw64\x86_64-w64-mingw32\lib\
- DLL Runtime library
  32-bit: copy libffi-(root)\i686-pc-mingw32\.libs\libffi*.dll %windir%\system32\
  64-bit: copy libffi-(root)\x86_64-w64-mingw32\.libs\libffi*.dll %windir%\system32\

As a convenience, the 32-bit and 64-bit pre-built libffi6.dll archives are available. The packages already have the proper i686-pc-mingw32 and x86_64-w64-mingw32 directories to use.

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