Revision

  $Id: pcre-compile-mingw.base,v 1.4 2009/12/04 22:16:43 pab Exp $

Purpose

  This recipe demonstrates how to build a static version of PCRE
  using MinGW/MSYS with UTF-8 and Unicode support.

Motivation

  When compiling FTimes, we prefer to link against statically compiled
  PCRE libraries.  This eliminates the need to have PCRE DLLs deployed
  on the systems that will be running the tool.

Requirements

  Cooking with this recipe requires MinGW/MSYS and Active Perl 5.8.8
  build 822 or higher.  You can determine the version of Perl by
  running the command below inside the MSYS shell.

    $ perl -V

  This recipe was last tested on pcre-8.00 with MinGW 5.1.4, and MSYS
  1.0.10.  You can determine the version of MSYS by executing the
  command below in the MSYS shell.

    $ msysinfo

  You can determine the version of MinGW by viewing the programs
  listed in the "Add or Remove Programs" panel accessible from the
  Control Panel.

  The source tarball for PCRE can be downloaded from the following
  URL.

    http://www.pcre.org/

Solution

  The solution is to run the configure script passing it the following
  options.  Please see the README file included with the PCRE
  distribution for more detailed descriptions of the options.

    --disable-cpp - suppress building of C++ wrapper library
    --disable-shared - build using static libraries only
    --enable-newline-is-anycrlf - newline is any carrage return or line feed
    --enable-utf8 - add support for UTF-8 Unicode character strings
    --enable-unicode-properties - add support for unicode character properties

  The following steps describe how to implement this solution.

  1. Start a new MSYS shell, and unpack the PCRE tar ball.

       $ tar -jxf pcre-8.00.tar.bz2

  2. Change to the newly created pcre-8.00 directory, and run the
     configure script as follows:

       $ cd pcre-8.00
       $ ./configure --disable-cpp --disable-shared --enable-newline-is-anycrlf --enable-utf8 --enable-unicode-properties

  3. Compile with:

       $ make

  4. Test with:

       $ make test

     Note: This results in an exception for pcretest.exe, and some of
     the tests fail.  However, this does not appear to impact FTimes
     in any way.

  5. Install PCRE with:

       $ make install

Closing Remarks

  The process documented in this recipe is known to work with the
  stated versions of PCRE, MinGW, MSYS, and Active Perl.  Your mileage
  may vary with different version combinations.  As a general rule,
  you should not use versions older than those stated above.

Credits

  This recipe was brought to you by Klayton Monroe and Jason Smith.