Provide a Windows installer

[jondo]

[karlnapf]

@jondo do you use windows? We lack of someone who is able to build such a thing.

[jondo]

I also cannot do it - but please keep this open as a (possibly low priority) feature request.

[karlnapf]

Ok got it

[macumber]

Is it possible to build Shogun on Windows? Specifically the Ruby bindings

[karlnapf]

I think it is possible if you know what you are doing and are ready to spend a few nights hacking cmake. Otherwise, sadly, no. We want to change this but the priority compared to other features is dropping .... sorry

[macumber]

I have experience with SWIG and Cmake but I can't get a starting build of the non-Ruby components. I tried initializing a build environment using Ruby's DevKit then generating Unix Makefiles but the build failed right away on Eigen.

[karlnapf]

The first big step would be to build libshogun without any plugins. THAT would already be giant step forward. Interested? We can definitely help!

[macumber]

Here is what I did to set up my environment:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsal
l.bat"

"c:\DevKit\devkitvars.bat"
Adding the DevKit to PATH...

"c:\Program Files (x86)\CMake\bin\cmake-gui.exe" # configure Unix Makefiles, Disable meta examples

"gcc --version"
gcc (rubenvb-4.7.2-release) 4.7.2

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Git-1.9.5\Git\bin

SET PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin"

# "c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" shogun.sln

Here is summary of configuration:

===================================================================================================================
Summary of Configuration Variables

-- The following OPTIONAL packages have been found:

 * GDB
 * OpenMP
 * Threads
 * Doxygen (required version >= 1.8.6)

-- The following REQUIRED packages have been found:

 * PythonInterp

-- The following OPTIONAL packages have not been found:

 * CCache
 * Mosek
 * BLAS
 * LAPACK
 * GLPK
 * CPLEX
 * ARPACK
 * Eigen3 (required version >= 3.1.2)
 * ViennaCL (required version >= 1.5.0)
 * NLopt
 * LpSolve
 * ColPack
 * Sphinx
 * LibXml2
 * HDF5
 * CURL
 * ZLIB
 * BZip2
 * LibLZMA
 * SNAPPY
 * LZO
 * Spinlock
 * Protobuf

-- The following REQUIRED packages have not been found:

 * OpenCL

===================================================================================================================
Enabled Integration
  OpenCV Integration is OFF      - enable with -DOpenCV=ON
===================================================================================================================
Enabled Interfaces
  libshogun is ON
  python modular is OFF      - enable with -DPythonModular=ON
  octave modular is OFF      - enable with -DOctaveModular=ON
  java modular is OFF    - enable with -DJavaModular=ON
  perl modular is OFF    - enable with -DPerlModular=ON
  ruby modular is OFF    - enable with -DRubyModular=ON
  csharp modular is OFF      - enable with -DCSharpModular=ON
  R modular is OFF       - enable with -DRModular=ON
  lua modular is OFF     - enable with -DLuaModular=ON


------------------------------------
Shogun will be built GPL3 compatible
------------------------------------


Enabled legacy interfaces
  cmdline static is OFF      - enable with -DCmdLineStatic=ON
  python static is OFF   - enable with -DPythonStatic=ON
  octave static is OFF   - enable with -DOctaveStatic=ON
  matlab static is OFF   - enable with -DMatlabStatic=ON
  R static is OFF        - enable with -DRStatic=ON
===================================================================================================================
To compile shogun type
  make

To install shogun to C:/Program Files (x86)/shogun type
  make install

or to install to a custom directory
  make install DESTDIR=/my/special/path
  (or rerun cmake with -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/my/special/path) to just change the prefix
===================================================================================================================
Configuring done

Here is the build error I get:

E:\shogun\build>make
[  0%] Built target Eigen3
[  1%] Generating version header
[  1%] Built target version
Scanning dependencies of target class_list
**[  1%] Generating E;c:\DevKit\shogun\src\shogun\base\class_list.cpp**
/bin/sh: C:/Users/dmacumbe/AppData/Local/Continuum/Miniconda2/python.exe: Bad fi
le number
make[2]: *** [../src/shogun/base/class_list.cpp] Error 126
make[2]: *** Deleting file `../src/shogun/base/class_list.cpp'
make[1]: *** [src/shogun/CMakeFiles/class_list.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

Seems like there is some code generation happening and the paths are messed up on windows:

**[ 1%] Generating E;c:\DevKit\shogun\src\shogun\base\class_list.cpp**

What is the right channel for communication if I work on this further? Make a fork of shogun and talk there?

[karlnapf]

• channel of communication: irc and github
• way of sharing information, github gist
• yeah fork shogun, and send pull requests against our develop branch, we can then discuss your suggestions there
• @vigsterkr might have some comments on the particular errors you have there
• messed up path names should be easy to fix actually

[macumber]

Cool thanks, I tried building with MSVC and saw some totally different errors. Code referencing a dead repo 'http://msinttypes.googlecode.com/svn/trunk' and other errors. Do you have any idea how out of state MSVC builds are? Is it best to try cross-compiling with gcc?

[macumber]

Taking a crack at it https://github.com/macumber/shogun/tree/build_windows

[karlnapf]

I think we had a cygwin build running previously http://buildbot.shogun-toolbox.org/waterfall I did not do that, but @sonney2k maybe he has ideas. Come say hello in irc

[vigsterkr]

we should resurrect this bug as starting with 8fdf278dca78f98d4e06058a5ce3defd560d697d we natively support MS Windows build. i reckon we should create a package and publish it on (nuget)[https://www.nuget.org] using appveyor

[jjYBdx4IL]

There is a vcpkg port for Windows. Would be great to have some CI running to make sure examples work fine there.