Main > Reference Manual > Download and install > Installing on Windows > Compiling on windows

Different options exist to compile Frepple under windows:

Note that executables and extension modules created by these compilers are not compatible with each other.

Compiling using Microsoft Visual C++ compiler

FrePPLe comes with Microsoft Visual C++ projects and workspaces to compile the code.
The solution file is contrib/vc/frepple.sln and more detailed build instructions are provided in the README.txt file in this directory.

The project configuration files are generated with version Visual Studio Express C++ 2008 (aka vc9), which can be downloaded freely from the Microsoft website.

For the Windows build, you will also need to install:

  • Python 2.7
  • Xerces-C 3.1 (best is to install the precompiled binaries for vc9)
  • Optional, glpk 4.25 or higher (easy to compile from source code with its build script)

A convenience script contrib/vc/build.bat is provided to rebuild the source code from the command line. The script needs to edited to point to the installation folders of all components.

To compile from the IDE, the include and library directories of these 2 external projects need to configured to point to the install directory of all components.

Warning: Compiling with Visual Studio C++ 2010 will NOT work. This is because Python and all its extension modules are compiled with vc9, and mixing CRTs from different compilers is never a good idea.

Compiling using the Cygwin compiler

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. The Cygwin environment can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.cygwin.com.

The build instructions on Cygwin are identical to the Linux and Unix platforms.

Compared to the other platforms and compilers, the Cygwin executables are considerably slower.
Consider the Cygwin build as a test and development setup for a *nix environment.