Compiling on Windows

Here are the steps to compile frePPLe under Windows with Microsoft Visual Studio.

• First, install the following third party tools:

  • Python 3.6 or higher

    Install the 64-bit version of Python 3.

    https://www.python.org/downloads/
  • Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2019.

    The community edition is sufficient.

    https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/
  • CMake tools foor Visual Studio

    This plugin integrates cmake into the Visual Studio IDE.

    https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.cmake-tools
  • Xerces-C 3.1.3

    You will have to compile this package from source. The xerces-c team provides a Visual Studio file that can be used to create a 64-bit static library.

    https://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/download.cgi
  • PostgreSQL 10 or higher

    You’ll need the PostgreSQL relational database.

• Download the source code from https://github.com/frePPLe/frepple
• Install the required Python packages

  The source code contains a requirements.txt with a list of all packages. You install them with pip:

  python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
  

• Option 1: Open the Visual studio project

  In Windows Explorer, right click on any source code folder and select “Open with Visual Studio”.

  Visual Studio will start and configure the project. Visual Studio will report if python or xerces-c aren’t be found. When these are available you’re all set to compile the project.
• Option 2: Use Cmake from the command line

  This is an alternative to the previous step.

  Open a Visual Studio Developer command shell and run the standard CMake build steps:

  # Make a build folder
  cd <your-source-folder>
  mkdir build
  cd build
  
  # Configure the environment.
  # If python or xercesc are not found, you'll get errors here.
  cmake ..
  
  # Compile the source code
  cmake --build . --config Release
  

• Test the result:

  Finally, let’s check if it all worked.

  • After successful compilation you will find your binaries in the folder <your-source-folder>/bin.

  • Run the unit test suite:

    cd <your-source-folder>\test
    python runtest.py --regression