libmusicbrainz5 and Visual Studio 2010 (Page 1 of 2)

After downloading your branch and spending another half-day trying to get the library to compile on a standard, 64-bit Vista platform, and failing utterly, I am unable to waste more time trying to get this to work; I have a project I need to complete.  I guess it will only run on Linux.

In my opinion, until there is a clearly-defined installation document that describes how to compile libmusicbrainz5 under Windows, or until a binary DLL is provided for both 32 and 64-bit systems, support for this platform should be expunged from the front page; it's simply not true.

If it will only compile under MinGW, then a script for accomplishing this must be posted.  My problem has been getting CMake to work at all, and specifically how to get a version of pkg-config to work on my platform.

Hi Steve,

Having run through the README on a fresh system today (my work computer with VS2010 Ultimate), I encountered only one problem, which I fixed using the workaround described here:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStud … or-msb6001

Hopefully this will fix your problem. If it does, I'll add it to the README.

Wow. Trying to stay level-headed here...

Okay, once again, as I said in my initial post; the problem isn't with VS 2010.  The problem is with CMake.  And it's not the README file that contains the installation 'documentation', its the 'INSTALL.txt' file, and the entire 'Building' section of this file consists of a whopping three lines of description:

    cmake .
    make
    make install

Problem is... it doesn't work when you start from scratch.  And further, 'make' doesn't work on a VS2010 system, so the last two lines are invalid from the start.  I suppose if you tried it on a machine that's already configured with MinGW and has the 64-bit GTK libraries, and has a proper installation of cmake, has a working version of pkg-config, and has the PATH variable properly updated to point to all the right places, 'cmake' might actually produce a valid VS .sln file, but to tacitly assume all of this, without specifically indicating there may be problems, does a huge disservice to those of us trying to get MB to work under windows.

Over the weekend, I *finally* was able, after a week of work, to get pkg-config to execute without throwing numerous errors (there are also numerous 32/64-bit inconsistencies that need to be resolved).  I basically had to set up a complete MinGW/GTK development environment in order to do so.  Bottom line is: CMake works fine, as long as you have a fully configured, Linux-like dev environment -- something not many VS users will possess.

The right way to support VS isn't CMake, it's to provide pre-built '.sln' files.

Oh well... hopefully today I'll be able to actually create a VS solution file.  If i can get there, I'm reasonably certain MB will compile.

Okay, I *think* I got a valid 'libneon.lib' file -- at least the 'nmake' seemed to succeed.  If I do as the MB 'INSTALL.txt' file says, and go to the MB directory and enter 'cmake .' (after installing cmake and properly updating the PATH variable to point to it), I get:

------------------------
...\libmusicbrainz-5.0.1>cmake .
-- checking for module 'neon'
--   package 'neon' not found
CMake Error at C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:97 (MESSAGE)
:
  Could NOT find Neon (missing: NEON_LIBRARIES NEON_INCLUDE_DIR)
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  C:/Program Files (x86)/CMake 2.8/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:288 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSA
GE)
  cmake/modules/FindNeon.cmake:19 (FIND_PACKAGE_HANDLE_STANDARD_ARGS)
  CMakeLists.txt:22 (FIND_PACKAGE)

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
------------------------

And of course, at this point, I have zero idea where to define 'NEON_LIBRARIES' and 'NEON_INCLUDE_PATH', since there is no doc's about the structure of the MB 'cmake' files.

Okay, after doing some research and learning how CMake works, I determined that the ‘<MB Install Directory>/cmake/modules/FindNeon.cmake’ file contains the environment variable references. 

I tried adding the paths to the neon include directory and libraries directly into the file – didn’t work.

I tried defining the ‘PKG_NEON_INCLUDE_DIRS’ and ‘PKG_NEON_LIBRARY_DIRS’ system variables directly in the command window – didn’t work.

I tried moving the neon directory into the root path of my drive, eliminating any paths with spaces and appropriately updating my environment variables – didn’t work

I tried using ‘NEON_LIBRARIES’ and ‘NEON_INCLUDE_DIRECTORY’ instead of the ‘PKG_...’ versions of the variables – did not work

I’m now sitting, staring at the monitor, trying to guess what I should try next.

Are you getting the picture, guys?  This is a nightmare.

No, I'm using the official release.  I will go download that and get back to you.

I don't understand why you're seeing those failures. I've just run though them with VS C++ 10 Express and it all compiled just fine.

Perhaps Seltzer can shed further light on this?

Andy

And another thing... Here's the contents of the output window in CMake GUI v2.8.8:

--------------------------------
checking for module 'neon'
  package 'neon' not found
Found Neon: D:/neon-0.29.6/libneon.lib 
Configuring done
Generating done
--------------------------------

How can 'neon' be not found and found at the same time?

Oh.. and the generator I'm using is 'Visual Studio 10 Win64'.

**** EXTREMELY CRITICAL NOTE ****

After implementing the Microsoft bug-fix, described above, and starting from a completely fresh 'Seltser' distro, I was able to partially build the package.

Here is the extremely important, critical rule:

DO NOT BUILD THE SOLUTION 'libmusicbrainz5'!!

To get a successful build, YOU MUST BUILD THE 'ALL_BUILD' Project. 

If you just tell VS to build the solution (which most VS developers will do by habit and default), the needed .h files WILL NOT BE GENERATED and the build will fail.  the 'ALL_BUILD' project absolutely must be built instead, and that will, in turn, fork builds for all 'child' projects.  This is fundamentally different from the normal Microsoft build standard, and will cause most VS people to crash and burn.

I still didn't get an actual 'lib' file though... further research indicates the 'INSTALL' project tries to write to C:/Program Files -- an extremely dangerous and ill-advised procedure.  I'm going back to CMake-land.

Some progress, however.

That's not the normal way I build solutions; I right-click on the solution in the Solution Explorer, and choose 'Build'.  That most definitely does not work.  Using your Build-Menu technique, however, does. At least... it compiles.  I still cant find the actual 'lib' file because I *think* it tries to write directly to the 'C' drive Program Files folder, which violates major Microsoft rules.  The build needs to write to a 'lib' or 'bin' folder in the project hierarchy.

I didn't change them at all. They're only used if you run the 'INSTALL' step. I don't think this runs automatically.

I found the files here (all paths relative to the 'build' directory you specify in CMake GUI)

src\Debug\musicbrainz5.dll
src\Debug\musicbrainz5.lib
examples\Debug\cdlookup.exe

If you copy musicbrainz5.dll into examples\Debug, you can then run

cdlookup WtKVvRf0LgeYqI9eTWZzjQoCslk-

And it will lookup that discid and report the results.

Andy