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This repository is to provide libraries needed to compile FreeCAD under Windows. Releases are named according to which version of FreeCAD they are expected to work with. The most recent LibPack is typically only designed to work with the current development branch of FreeCAD. To compile release versions of FreeCAD you typically must use older versions of the LibPack. LibPacks release names include the version of FreeCAD they are designed to work with.

The current LibPack, v3.1, is tested to work with Microsoft Visual Studio version 17.12, e.g. MSVC 143, and is known to not work with earlier versions (e.g. Visual Studio 2019 will not work with LibPack v3, and must use LibPack v2.11) It should be possible to use other compilers like MinGW, however this is not tested. This LibPack only supports FreeCAD compilation in Release or RelWithDebInfo mode. It may be possible to compile the LibPack in Debug mode, but changes will certainly be required (and patches are welcome!). In particular, the pip installation of Numpy will have to be adjusted to compile a debug version of Numpy, which will otherwise fail to load from a debug compilation of Python.

For information how to use the LibPack to compile, see this Wiki page: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Compile_on_Windows

Building the LibPack

To build the LibPack locally, you will need the following:

  • Network access
  • Visual Studio 17.12.x, accessible by cMake (other versions may work, but are not supported)
  • CMake
  • git
  • 7z (see https://www.7-zip.org)
  • Python >= 3.8 (not used inside the LibPack itself, just used to run the creation script)
  • The "requests" Python package (e.g. 'pip install requests')
  • The "diff-match-patch" Python package (e.g. 'pip install diff-match-patch')
  • Qt - the base installation plus Qt Image Formats and Qt PDF
  • GNU Bison (for Windows see https://github.com/lexxmark/winflexbison/)

With those pieces in place, the next step is to configure the contents of the LibPack by editing config.json. This file lists the source for each LibPack component. Depending on the component, there are three different ways it might be included:

  1. Source code checked out from a git repository and built using the local compiler toolchain
  2. A pip package installed to the LibPack directory using the LibPack's Python interpreter
    • Note that pip itself is installed using the ensure_pip Python module
  3. Files copied from a local source
  4. Compressed files downloaded from a remote source and unpacked

The JSON file just lists out the sources and versions: beyond specifying which method is used for the installation by setting either "git-repo" and "git_ref", or "install-directory", the actual details of how things are built when source code is provided are set in the compile_all.py script. In that file, the class Compiler contains methods following the naming convention build_XXX where XXX is the "name" provided in the JSON configuration file. If you need to add a compiled or copied package, you must both specify it in the config.json file and provide a matching build_XXX method. For pip installation, only the config.json file needs to be edited to include the new dependency.

To change the way a package is compiled, you edit its entry in compile_all.py. See the contents of that file for various examples.

Running the build script

python.exe create_libpack [arguments]

Arguments:

  • -m, --mode -- 'release' or 'debug' (Default: 'release' -- debug is not currently functional)
  • -c, --config -- Path to a JSON configuration file for this utility (Default: './config.json')
  • -w, --working -- Directory to put all the clones and downloads in (Default: './working')
  • -e, --no-skip-existing-clone -- If a given clone (or download) directory exists, delete it and download it again
  • -b, --no-skip-existing-build -- If a given build already exists, run the build process again anyway
  • -s, --silent -- I kow what I'm doing, don't ask me any questions
  • --7zip -- Path to 7-zip executable if not in PATH
  • --bison -- Path to Bison executable if not in PATH