Building and hacking LDC on Windows using MSVC

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LDC on Windows is work in progress. This page documents how to build, test and hack LDC2 on Windows x64.

Pre-built LDC

If you just want to download the very latest pre-built LDC for Win64, head over to Latest pre-built LDC for Win64.

Advice

It is hard for us to keep these wiki pages up-to-date. If you run into trouble, have a look at the build scripts for our Continuous Integration platforms: the files .travis.yml (Ubuntu Linux and OSX) and appveyor.yml (Windows) are always up-to-date with the latest build setup.

Building LDC

Required software

  • Windows x64, of course!
  • Visual Studio (e.g. VS Community 2015)
  • a D compiler (currently only DMD works to build LDC on Windows. LDC 0.17 is the last version that does not need a D compiler to build.)
  • git 1.8+ (I use PortableGit)
  • Python 2.7.x or Python 3.3.x (I use Portable Python)
  • CMake 2.8+
  • Ninja, a neat little and fast build system
  • Curl library (just use a precompiled one)
    • Put 64-bit curl.lib in a LIB/LIBPATH directory (e.g., C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\lib\amd64)...
    • ... and 64-bit libcurl.dll in a PATH directory (e.g., C:\LDC\LDC-x64\bin).

Shell environment

I use a little batch file to set up my LDC build environment. It's located in the root of my LDC environment: C:\LDC\shell.cmd. It sets up the PATH environment variable (I've installed the portable tools into C:\LDC\Tools) and then spawns a new VS 2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt with a below-normal process priority, so that my system stays responsive while building. I use a shortcut on my desktop to this batch file. Please adjust it to your needs (and note that %~dp0 is the directory containing the script, i.e., C:\LDC\). 

@echo off
set PATH=%~dp0LDC-x64\bin;%~dp0LLVM-x64\bin;%~dp0Tools\Ninja 1.6.0;%~dp0Tools\make-3.81\bin;%~dp0Tools\PortableGit-1.8.1.2-preview20130201\bin;%~dp0Tools\cmake-3.3.0-win32-x86\bin;%~dp0Tools\Portable Python 2.7.5.1\App;%PATH%
if not exist "%TERM%" set TERM=msys
start /belownormal %comspec% /k "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" amd64

Open a shell by executing the batch file.

  • Running cl should display the banner from the MS compiler.
  • Running git --version should display the banner from git.
  • Running python --version should display the banner from python.
  • Running cmake --version should display the banner from cmake.
  • Running ninja --version should display the ninja version.

Build LLVM

To build LLVM from the command line, just execute the following steps (from C:\LDC):

  • Get the source: git clone http://llvm.org/git/llvm.git llvm
  • Check out the LLVM 3.7 branch: git checkout release_37
  • Create a build directory: md build-llvm-x64
  • Change into it: cd build-llvm-x64

  • Use a command like this (in one line) to create the Ninja build files:

    cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:\LDC\LLVM-x64" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="RelWithDebInfo"
      -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE="C:\LDC\Tools\Portable Python 2.7.5.1\App\python.exe"
      -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="X86" -DLLVM_INCLUDE_TESTS=OFF -DLLVM_INCLUDE_EXAMPLES=OFF
      -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=ON -DLLVM_APPEND_VC_REV=ON ..\llvm

    Omit the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE definition to build a debug version. The LLVM page on CMake documents other variables you can change. The most common is to add more targets. E.g. to build a target for ARM you change the targets to build to -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="X86;ARM".

  • Build LLVM: ninja
  • Install it: ninja install

Build libconfig

  • cd C:\LDC
  • git clone https://github.com/hyperrealm/libconfig.git libconfig
  • cd libconfig
  • Build the static C library: msbuild lib\libconfig.vcxproj /t:Rebuild /p:Configuration=ReleaseStatic /p:Platform=x64
    • Use configuration DebugStatic for debug LDC builds to ensure we link against the same runtime library

Build LDC

  • cd C:\LDC
  • git clone --recursive git://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc.git ldc
  • md build-ldc-x64
  • cd build-ldc-x64

  • Set environment variable to which D compiler should be used to build LDC:

    set DMD=c:\path\to\dmd\bin\dmd.exe

  • Use a command like this (in one line):

    cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="C:\LDC\LDC-x64" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="RelWithDebInfo"
      -DLLVM_ROOT_DIR="C:/LDC/LLVM-x64" -DLIBCONFIG_INCLUDE_DIR="C:/LDC/libconfig/lib"
      -DLIBCONFIG_LIBRARY="C:/LDC/libconfig/lib/x64/ReleaseStatic/libconfig.lib" ..\ldc
  • Build LDC and the runtimes: ninja
  • If you want to install it: ninja install

Tests

Running the LIT-based tests

  • You'll need to have lit installed for Python.
  • cd C:\LDC\build-ldc-x64\tests
  • python runlit.py -v .

Running the runtime unit tests

  • cd C:\LDC\build-ldc-x64
  • Build the unit tests: ninja druntime-ldc-unittest druntime-ldc-unittest-debug phobos2-ldc-unittest phobos2-ldc-unittest-debug
  • Run the tests, excluding the dmd-testsuite ones: ctest -E dmd-testsuite

For troubleshooting be sure to examine the file C:\LDC\build-ldc-x64\Testing\Temporary\LastTest.log.

Running the dmd-testsuite tests

dmd-testsuite requires a minimalistic GNU environment. bash is shipped with git. Additionally, we need GNU make and reasonably recent GNU diffutils and coreutils:

  • Download GNU make for Windows: binary + dependencies
  • Download GNU diffutils for Windows: binaries (same dependencies as make)
  • Download GNU coreutils for Windows: binaries (same dependencies as make)
  • Extract all 4 ZIP archives into a common root folder, e.g., C:\LDC\Tools\make
  • Edit your shell batch script and add the bin subdirectory to your PATH, e.g., set PATH=%~dp0Tools\make\bin;%PATH%
    • Make sure that directory preceeds the git bin directory in the PATH environment variable, so that the more recent executables in C:\LDC\Tools\make\bin are preferred over the (in my case, ancient) versions shipped with git.
  • Spawn a new shell and make sure make --version prints its banner.

Now that we have extended our LDC build environment, you'll probably need to patch the dmd-testsuite repository. Then we're finally able to run the dmd-testsuite tests:

  • cd C:\LDC\build-ldc-x64
  • ctest --verbose -R dmd-testsuite
    • Debug only: ctest --verbose -R dmd-testsuite-debug
    • Release only: ctest --verbose -R dmd-testsuite -E -debug

Developing/debugging LDC/LLVM with Visual Studio

  • cd C:\LDC
  • md vs-ldc-x64
  • cd vs-ldc-x64
  • Use the cmake command from the Build LDC section, but use the VS generator instead of Ninja this time: cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 Win64" ...
  • This creates the VS solution C:\LDC\vs-ldc-x64\ldc.sln.

A Visual Studio solution for LLVM can be created the same way.

Known bugs/limitations

Example

The simple D program hello.d 

import std.stdio;

int main()
{
    writefln("Hello LDC2");
    return 0;
}

can be compiled and linked with the commands: 

ldc2 -c hello.d
link hello2.obj phobos-ldc.lib shell32.lib

or simply with: ldc2 hello.d

The resulting hello.exe produces the expected output.


Windows MSVC

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