Instructions to build with MSVC

[roman-orekhov]

Maybe this will save someone some headache

1. Get python version 3 in PATH. I just happened to have 3.11, no issues
2. Get meson. Docs don't specify the version but the project won't build with version <0.64. For this I used vcpkg from Git Bash:

   cd /c/vcpkg
   git pull
   ./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
   # if you have one installed but it is old
   ./vcpkg remove vcpkg-tool-meson --recurse
   ./vcpkg install vcpkg-tool-meson
   

3. Do not use libffi from vcpkg since it is a DLL not a static lib
4. Make cffi/deps folder and put whatever the docs say you need to put there. I've put this tree there lua53.dll lua53.lib lua53.exe include\lauxlib.h include\lua.h include\luaconf.h include\lualib.h include\lua.hpp
5. mkdir cffi/build
6. Now open a developer command prompt from Visual Studio in this folder and do this for default buildtype (debugoptimized). Use your paths. Git is needed to grab libffi. --skip-subprojects is needed to not install it since it is a static lib.

   set PATH=C:\Work\Tools\Git\bin;%PATH%
   python c:\vcpkg\downloads\tools\meson-1.3.2-d646d3\meson.py setup .. -Dlua_version=vendor -Dlua_install_path=c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\@0@\debug
   ninja all
   ninja test
   python c:\vcpkg\downloads\tools\meson-1.3.2-d646d3\meson.py install --skip-subprojects
   

7. This got installed

   Installing cffi.dll to c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\5.3\debug
   Installing cffi.lib to c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\5.3\debug
   Installing cffi.pdb to c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\5.3\debug
   

8. For a release build do this instead:

   set PATH=C:\Work\Tools\Git\bin;%PATH%
   python c:\vcpkg\downloads\tools\meson-1.3.2-d646d3\meson.py setup .. -Dlua_version=vendor -Dlua_install_path=c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\@0@ -Dbuildtype=release
   ninja all
   ninja test
   python c:\vcpkg\downloads\tools\meson-1.3.2-d646d3\meson.py install --tags runtime
   

9. This will get installed Installing cffi.dll to c:\Work\Tools\qlua\lib\lua\5.3