Compiling-ICU-with-MinGW

Compiling ICU with MinGW (for adding Unicode support)

Qt 5 / QtWebkit requires ICU, which MinGW distributions do not ship.

Pre-built packages

The ICU Project site provides pre-compiled libraries for both 32 and 64 bit. However, these depend on the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 runtime being installed.

download.qt.io also hosts packages for the MinGW toolchains Qt ships.

Inside MSYS2 shell, a pre-built ICU can be obtained. MSYS2 also contains pre-built dynamic Qt & QtCreator (and static Qt) with ICU & OpenSSL support.

Compiling on your own

Requirements

• Either use MSYS or use MSYS2.
  • MSYS shell command prompt (an sh shell + some UNIX tools, get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/Base/msys-core/msys-1.0.11/MSYS-1.0.11.exe/download?use_mirror=garr. It's also an (optional) part of mingw.org installer.)
  • MSYS2 shell command prompt, (similar to MSYS), it can be obtained from https://msys2.github.io/
• Working MinGW, or MinGW-w64 toolchain.
  • Load MinGW or MinGW-w64 toolchains.
  • NOTE: Do not use (or try to avoid using) different type of toolchains for building different sub-components for the same/main project, targeted for same platform/OS. If you are using MinGW-w64 toolchains from MSYS2\mingw32 or MSYS2\mingw64, then for building main project & all of its sub-components, use same MSYS2 toolchains. If you are using MinGW toolchain, then for building all of your sub-components & main project, use same MinGW toolchain. If you are using MinGW-w64 toolchains from "MinGW-builds", then for building all sub-components & main project, use same MinGW-builds toolchains.

How to build

• Download latest ICU4C source code from http://site.icu-project.org/download (e.g. icu4c-52_1-src.zip), unzip
• Either start MSYS-shell, or start MSYS2-shell:
  • Start a MSYS shell command prompt (C:.0\msys.bat)
  • Or, start MSYS2 shell command prompt (C:2\msys2_shell.bat)
    • See in MSYS2 page, how to prepare MSYS2-shell with build/compile related tools & dependencies & toolchains

• Inside MSYS or MSYS2 shell, run/execute below command:

$ cd icu/source

• Check that gcc is in PATH, otherwise add it:
  • If using MSYS shell, and if MinGW (32bit) is installed inside /c/mingw32 directory, then execute this:

$ export PATH="/c/mingw32/bin:$PATH"

• • If using MSYS2 shell, execute this, if you are building for 32bit:

$ export PATH="/c/msys2/mingw32/bin:$PATH"

• • If using MSYS2 shell, execute this, if you are building for 64bit:

$ export PATH="/c/msys2/mingw64/bin:$PATH"

• Run configure && build:

$ ./runConfigureICU MinGW prefix=$PWD/../dist

This will generate a release shared build that you can use in both a debug and release build of Qt.

• To link ICU statically (e.g. for a static release build of Qt), you have to append ‘—enable-static —disable-shared’ :

$ ./runConfigureICU MinGW —prefix=$PWD/../dist —enable-static —disable-shared

• To link ICU statically and build it in debug mode (e.g. for a static debug build of Qt), you have to prepend ‘—enable-debug —disable-release’ to the arguments:

$ ./runConfigureICU —enable-debug —disable-release MinGW —prefix=$PWD/../dist —enable-static —disable-shared

• Finally, run make && make install

$ make && make install

Using it

• Add the include, lib folders to your compilation environment, e.g. for cmd.exe (Cmd-shell) :

C:> set PATH=%PATH%;C:\icu\dist\bin
C:> set INCLUDE=%INCLUDE%;C:\icu\dist\include
C:> set LIB=%LIB%;C:\icu\dist\lib

• Add the include, lib folders to your compilation environment, e.g. for MSYS2-shell (or for MSYS-shell) :

$ export PATH="$PATH:/c/icu/dist/bin"
$ export INCLUDE="$INCLUDE:/c/icu/dist/include"
$ export LIB="$LIB:/c/icu/dist/lib"

When you now run Qt’s configure.exe ICU should be detected, and Qt links against the libraries.