Diff for "BuildingWindowsInstaller"

[Note: this page has been adapted from contrib/win32/win32-build.txt found in Mercurial's source tree]

The standalone Windows installer for Mercurial is built in a somewhat jury-rigged fashion.

Prerequisites

It has the following prerequisites, at least as I build it:

Python for Windows

• http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4.3/python-2.4.3.msi

MinGW

• http://www.mingw.org/

Python for Windows Extensions

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

mfc71.dll (just download, don't install)

• http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/

The py2exe distutils extension

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/

Inno Setup

• http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

ISTool (optional)

• http://www.istool.org/default.aspx/

add_path (you need only add_path.exe in the zip file)

• http://www.barisione.org/apps.html#add_path

And, of course, Mercurial itself

• http://www.selenic.com/hg/

To build the html help files you need also:

asciidoc

• http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/downloads.html

[Note: to configure it you have to adjust your path so the asciidoc.py file is found (I use a link to it from /bin in an msys install), and you have to change the CONF_DIR hardcoded into that file so the backend and help files are found (in my case it's changed to "C:/winp/msys/1.0/etc/asciidoc")]

Additional Packages

It is extremely useful to have the Subversion Python bindings (see http://subversion.tigris.org/project_packages.html) installed when building the installer. If you do this, then the bindings will be picked up and included in the installer, which means that the convert extension can work with Subversion repositories.

If you do this, however, you must not use the -b 1 option to python setup.py py2exe, as that bundles the DLLs in a way which makes the subversion module crash. Instead, use -b 2 or just leave the option off (and take the default -b 3).

If you have pygments (http://pygments.org/) installed, this will allow use of the highlight extension.

The pyOpenSSL package (http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net/) will enable SSL support in hg serve.

Building Installer

Once you have all this installed and built, clone a copy of the Mercurial repository you want to package, and name the repo C:\hg\hg-release.

Open a command prompt window on C:\hg\hg-release, then build a standalone copy of the hg.exe program:

python setup.py build -c mingw32 
python setup.py py2exe -b 1

Note: the combined command "python setup.py build -c mingw32 py2exe -b 1" that had been suggested in the past doesn't work correctly, as it doesn't include the extensions in the mercurial subdirectory and separate commands should be used as indicated.

Alternatively, you can create a file named setup.cfg in the root of the repository (C:\hg\hg-release) with the following contents:

[build]
compiler=mingw32

which would allow you to skip the first build step and just run:

python setup.py py2exe -b 1

Copy mfc71.dll and add_path.exe into the dist directory that just got created.

To build the docs you:

cd doc
make html
cd ..

If Inno Setup is in your path you can run:

iscc contrib\win32\mercurial.iss

Or you can run ISTool, and open the C:\hg\hg-release\contrib\win32\mercurial.iss file. In ISTool, type Ctrl-F9 to compile the installer file.

The actual installer will be in the C:\hg\hg-release\Output directory.

To automate the steps above you may want to create a batchfile based on the following:

  echo [build] > setup.cfg
  echo compiler=mingw32 >> setup.cfg
  python setup.py py2exe -b 1
  iscc contrib\win32\mercurial.iss

and run it from the root of the hg repository (C:\hg\hg-release).

CategoryWindows CategoryHowTo