History: Building Ogre with boost 1.50 upwards and MinGW

Building Ogre with boost 1.50 upwards and MinGW This is a step-by-step guide for building Ogre, its dependencies and boost from sources, using your favourite Windows compiler, MinGW 😊 It covers every single step and will be the only tutorial you need to read for building Ogre if this is your desired setup.

Introduction

This guide covers how to do a static Ogre build with a certain plugin setup, but on the important places, a note will be added that tells what to do differently for a dynamic build or other plugins.

We will assume a lot of different folders in the course of this tutorial. You may of course derive from them if you want.

1. Download the Ogre sources

Download the latest Ogre sources, using Mercurial, from the Ogre repository:

http://bitbucket.org/sinbad/ogre/

For the purpose of this tutorial, let's assume you downloaded them to the following folder: C:\Ogre\sources\v1-8

2. Download the Ogre dependencies

The same as above, but download them from the following repository:

https://bitbucket.org/cabalistic/ogredeps/downloads

This time, let's assume the following folder: C:\Ogre\sources\dependencies

3. Download and install CMake

Download and install CMake
Be sure to use the latest version.

4. Download and install MinGW

Download the latest MinGW version from here, and install it.
It is advised to install it to the default directory: C:\MinGW
Be sure to add C:\MinGW\bin and C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin to your PATH.

5. Download boost

Download boost from here. This tutorial was written with version 1.50 in mind, but should work for any newer version as well.
Let's assume C:\boost as the path.

6. Building boost

Now we come to the fun part - building!

1. Navigate to C:\boost
2. Open index.html and go to "Getting Started" -> "Getting Started on Microsoft Windows"
3. Follow the steps to build boost from sources. You will most likely want to read section 5.3 "Build Binaries from source". Mind the following:
   1. Whenever you're supposed to run "bootstrap.bat", run "bootstrap.bat gcc" instead.
   2. As you are using MinGW, specify gcc as toolset when actually building boost.
   3. Building boost takes much time. Get a cup of tea.
   4. If you use the following line to build boost...
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      b2 --build-dir=C:\boost\build toolset=gcc --build-type=complete stage

      ... you will end up with a stage folder in C:\boost. Move the lib folder inside the stage folder to C:\boost so that you end up having a C:\boost\lib folder.
4. Add C:\boost to PATH and create a new environment variable named BOOST_ROOT also pointing to C:\boost.

7. Building the Ogre dependencies

1. Open the CMake GUI.
2. Set "Where is the source code" to C:\Ogre\sources\dependencies.
3. Set "Where to build the binaries" to C:\Ogre\building\dep-release. THIS IS NOT the final dependencies folder. It is merely the folder we will use to build the SDK.
4. Click "Configure" to init CMake. Select "MinGW Makefiles".
5. Based on your setup, CMake may or may not output some errors. Make sure to resolve them before continuing. CMake is usually pretty verbose about what to do. If you are having trouble, you can always ask in our forums, of course 😊. Click "Configure" again until no more errors appear.
6. Change CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to C:\Ogre\built\dependencies. Click "Generate".
7. Repeat 3) – 6), this time changing CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to "Debug". Also change the "Where to build the binaries" folder to C:\Ogre\building\dep-debug.
8. Open a command line in C:\Ogre\building\dep-release and type in "mingw32-make install". This will take a minute or two. Do this also for the debug folder.
9. Navigate to C:\Ogre\built\dependencies. Navigate to lib/Release within that folder and copy the cg.lib to lib/Debug. Somehow, the install make misses this.
10. Create a new environment variable named OGRE_DEPENDENCIES_DIR that points to C:\Ogre\built\dependencies.

8. Building the Ogre SDK

1. Open the CMake GUI.
2. Set "Where is the source code" to C:\Ogre\sources\v1-8.
3. Set "Where to build the binaries" to C:\Ogre\building\ogre-release. THIS IS NOT the final SDK folder. It is merely the folder we will use to build the SDK.
4. Click "Configure" to init CMake. Select "MinGW Makefiles".
5. If CMake did not find the dependencies, set the OGRE_DEPENDENCIES_DIR to C:\Ogre\built\dependencies manually.
6. You can ignore the "Boost_DIR-NOTFOUND" if everything else worked well. If you have a look at the vars in "Advanced" CMake mode, you will see that all boost related vars except that one are correct.
7. Set the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to C:\Ogre\built\ogre-sdk. Click "Configure" again.
8. If everything worked out, you will get a load of new configurations. Make sure to select OGRE_STATIC, OGRE_INSTALL_SAMPLES and OGRE_INSTALL_DOCS.
   1. If you want a dynamic build, do not select OGRE_STATIC 😊
   2. You can of course select other plugins as you desire, but this tutorial does only "guarantee" to work for the stated ones.
9. Click "Configure" again, resolving all problems that might appear, until everything goes well. Click "Generate".
10. Repeat 3) – 9), this time changing CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to "Debug". Also change the "Where to build the binaries" folder to C:\Ogre\building\ogre-debug.
11. Open a command line in C:\Ogre\building\ogre-release and type in "mingw32-make install". This will take some time, so get another cup of tea. Do this also for the debug folder (and get your third cup of tea).

9. Done

That's it!
You'll have a ready-to-use-with-MinGW Ogre SDK sitting in C:\Ogre\built\ogre-sdk, both in release and debug version.
Try out the samples, they rock! 😀
Also, you'll probably want to go to the toilet with all that tea you just drank.