Build on Windows with MinGW without WSL

[micropicostack]

I tired to build the tool on Windows but the options documented in README.md did not work for me.

I do not have a Visual Studio installation, so I wanted to use MinGW. After some time tinkering around I found that modifying the FindLIBUSB.cmake file and replacing the HINTS $ENV{LIBUSB_ROOT}/VS2019/MS32/static line with HINTS $ENV{LIBUSB_ROOT}/MinGW64/static and running cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" .. followed by mingw-make forked like a charm, I got my exe.

Now to the question or idea - could we update the FindLIBUSB.cmake to consider 32bit and 64bit machines, Windows MSVC and MinGW lib inclusion based on generator input?

For example something like this ?

if(CMAKE_GENERATOR MATCHES "MinGW")
    HINTS $ENV{LIBUSB_ROOT}/MinGW64/static
else
    HINTS $ENV{LIBUSB_ROOT}/VS2019/MS64/static
endif()

[lurch]

Now to the question or idea - could we update the FindLIBUSB.cmake to consider 32bit and 64bit machines, Windows MSVC and MinGW lib

Yes, we've done something similar before :slightly_smiling_face: https://github.com/raspberrypi/picotool/commit/757f2aee3c2c988b4d0c9c15907e243350381d0a

PRs welcome!

[ndabas]

If you're just looking to compile picotool on Windows without the overhead of Visual Studio or WSL, MSYS2 works fine with no changes, like we've done for pico-setup-windows.

[micropicostack]

Now to the question or idea - could we update the FindLIBUSB.cmake to consider 32bit and 64bit machines, Windows MSVC and MinGW lib

Yes, we've done something similar before 🙂 757f2ae

PRs welcome!

Okey, I might do a PR then, but I am not that familiar with Cmake. But to make the process as automatic as possible we have to

• Determine if we are running MinGW/Cygwin or Visual Studio generator
• Determine if we are on a 32bit or a 64bit machine

As for Visual Studio folder I guess it will be fixed to 2019 (although it seems there are newer versions - 2022).

Does that sound like a plan?

[micropicostack]

If you're just looking to compile picotool on Windows without the overhead of Visual Studio or WSL, MSYS2 works fine with no changes, like we've done for pico-setup-windows.

I got it to work with MinGW64 binaries (v13.2.0), I had to let cmake know that I was using MinGW generator and I then I used mingw32-make.exe to build the executable.

I made the issue as we could expand either on the FindLIBUSB.cmake and automate a little more or add more description to README.md

[Sultan-papagani]

it worked thank you so much

[micropicostack]

Created a PR https://github.com/raspberrypi/picotool/pull/102 This should improve the tool build on Windows machines.

[will-v-pi]

Thanks - #102 has been merged for picotool 2.0.0