Building glew on windows with mingw

Question

To build it with MinGW, you should do (copied from the make log, with slight modifications and additional explanations):

mkdir lib/
mkdir bin/
gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.o -c src/glew.c
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32.dll.a    -o lib/glew32.dll src/glew.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

# Create library file: lib/libglew32.dll.a
ar cr lib/libglew32.a src/glew.o

# Create pkg-config file (optional if you just want a lib)
sed \
                -e "s|@prefix@|/usr|g" \
                -e "s|@libdir@|/usr/lib|g" \
                -e "s|@exec_prefix@|/usr/bin|g" \
                -e "s|@includedir@|/usr/include/GL|g" \
                -e "s|@version@|1.6.0|g" \
                -e "s|@cflags@||g" \
                -e "s|@libname@|GLEW|g" \
                < glew.pc.in > glew.pc

gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -DGLEW_MX -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.mx.o -c src/glew.c
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32mx.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32mx.dll.a -o lib/glew32mx.dll src/glew.mx.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

# Create library file: lib/libglew32mx.dll.a
ar cr lib/libglew32mx.a src/glew.mx.o

# Create pkg-config file (optional if you just want a lib)
sed \
                -e "s|@prefix@|/usr|g" \
                -e "s|@libdir@|/usr/lib|g" \
                -e "s|@exec_prefix@|/usr/bin|g" \
                -e "s|@includedir@|/usr/include/GL|g" \
                -e "s|@version@|1.6.0|g" \
                -e "s|@cflags@|-DGLEW_MX|g" \
                -e "s|@libname@|GLEWmx|g" \
                < glew.pc.in > glewmx.pc

# Make the glew visualinfo program. Skip this if you want just the lib
gcc -c -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o src/glewinfo.o src/glewinfo.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o bin/glewinfo.exe src/glewinfo.o -Llib  -lglew32 -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32
gcc -c -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o src/visualinfo.o src/visualinfo.c
gcc -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude  -o bin/visualinfo.exe src/visualinfo.o -Llib  -lglew32 -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

You should then have a lib folder and a bin folder with the desired executables and libraries

I got it working (with MinGW), i didn't compile the glew32mx but glew32 instead. Just download the source .zip from GLEW website. And remember create "lib" directory in the the glew-1.xx directory, otherwise it will complain about "can't find /lib/glew32.dll" when trying to compile the second line of code below:

    gcc -DGLEW_NO_GLU -O2 -Wall -W -Iinclude -DGLEW_BUILD -o src/glew.o -c src/glew.c

    gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libglew32.dll -Wl,--out-implib,lib/libglew32.dll.a -o lib/glew32.dll src/glew.o -L/mingw/lib -lglu32 -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -luser32 -lkernel32

    # Create glew32.dll
    ar cr lib/libglew32.a src/glew.o

The precompiled binaries in GLEW website doesn't work with mingw, because they're compiled with visual studio, i think.

Found another solution that works with Code::Blocks. Steps:

1) Obviously you will need glew source code ;)

2) Open glew_shared.dsw files with C::B, edit project properties and, for each build target you need, change it's type from "Dynamic library" to "Static library" (it's right there, at Build targets tab). You can also change the destination directory as .dll files are built into bin\ directory.

3) Add #define GLEW_STATIC before #include

4) Build the target and it will result in proper libglew32*.a being created

Glew build system try to detect automatically your environment using config/configure.guess. You may overload this behaviour by specify $SYSTEM to make. See config/Makefile.* for all supported build configuration. Glew already include configuration to use MinGW.

So, you may just have to launch:

make SYSTEM=linux-mingw64

On my Fedora, I had to tune some variables of config/Makefile.linux-mingw64:

• $CC and $LD was not correct
• I had to specify directory where system libraries was located
• I had to specify where glew should be installed

Finally, I launched:

make SYSTEM=linux-mingw64                                       \
  CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc LD=x86_64-w64-mingw32-ld            \
  LDFLAGS.EXTRA=-L/usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/lib    \
  GLEW_DEST=/usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32/sys-root/mingw install

Further to PoL0's answer, i found those steps did work for me with MinGW on Code::Blocks but with one further alteration required - the default project has a lot of microsoft nonsense set in the "other options" under compiler options. Clear these and you'll have a good result (project build options -> [each target] -> compiler settings tab -> other options subtab)

You may also wish to enable optimisation for the two release targets (-O2 or -O3).

Additionally, the static libraries will be built in "bin" by default, you'll need to copy / move them to replace the ones in "lib".

Here is how VLC builds glew (static) on mingw:

https://github.com/videolan/vlc/tree/master/contrib/src/glew (they apply that patch). Guess glew has no easy option to "just" build a static library so you have to go through various hurdles (or manually compile, as the other answers allude to).

See also http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Installation/Windows#GLEW

and step 7 here: http://sujatha-techie.blogspot.com/2008/10/glsl-with-mingw.html

This is how mx does it: https://github.com/mxe/mxe/blob/master/src/glew.mk (looks like they basically just manually build everything, glew's Makefile seems weak...)