How to build Google’s protobuf in Windows using MinGW?

by

Here’s what worked for me:

  1. You need to install MSYS with mingw. This is a minimal unix-like shell environment that lets you configure/make most unix packages. Read the mingw docs on how to install that (either with mingw-get or the GUI installer).

  2. Once you have installed MSYS, you should have a shortcut in your start menu, named “MinGW Shell”. That opens a console with a bash.

  3. Extract the source tarball to your MSYS home directory. I have mingw installed in “D:\prog”, so the directory was “D:\prog\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\<username>”. You can tell your MSYS username from the shell prompt. When done, you should have a directory “D:\prog\MinGW\msys\1.0\home\<username>\protobuf-2.4.1”.

  4. At the shell prompt, change to the protobuf directory:

    cd protobuf-2.4.1

  5. Run the configure script (note the backquotes):

    ./configure --prefix=`cd /mingw; pwd -W`

    The --prefix paramater makes sure protobuf is installed in the mingw directory tree instead of the MSYS directories, so you can build outside the MSYS shell (e.g. with CodeBlocks…)

  6. Run make:

    make

  7. Install:

    make install

  8. That’s it. You should now be able to compile your project with protobuf.
    You should be able to:

    • call protoc from your project/makefiles
    • #include <google/protobuf/message.h> etc.
    • link with -lprotobuf or -lprotobuf-lite

HTH
Peter

Edit:
Bringing this a bit more up to date. I tried setting up a new PC with current versions of MinGW and protobuf 2.5.0, and these are the problems I had:

  1. There is no “MinGW Shell” shortcut in the start menu.
    For some reason current MinGW installations fail to install that.
    But there is a msys.bat in <Mingw home>\msys\1.0 which brings up a console with a bash. Create a shortcut to that batch file somewhere.

  2. gcc does not work from the MSYS shell.
    I had to run a post-installation batch file manually and answer the questions there. This sets up fstab entries that mount the mingw directories in the MSYS environment.
    You need to run <Mingw home>\msys\1.0\postinstall\pi.bat

  3. My Avira antivirus interfered with the protobuf compilation.
    It complained about the generated protoc.exe being a “TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen” trojan and blocked acces to that file, resulting in a corrupted build.
    I got error messages saying something like protoc:./.libs/lt-protoc.c:233: FATAL: couldn't find protoc. when trying to start protoc.
    I had to disable the Avira realtime scanner and make clean && make && make install again

Edit #2:

This post has aged quite a bit, and mingw does not equal mingw anymore.
In this day and age, I would rather recommend MSYS2 which comes with a port of ArchLinux’s pacman package manager, a recent, better-working (c++11 std::thread support!) mingw fork for both 32 and 64 bit, and a protobuf package that you just need to install and be good.

Go here to download!

Hope this helps!
Peter

More Related Contents:

  1. No error/warning for multiple cout in one statement
  2. Error when building a C++ program for the second time [closed]
  3. Why pow(10,5) = 9,999 in C++
  4. The program can’t start because libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll is missing
  5. How to redirect qDebug, qWarning, qCritical etc output?
  6. std::stoi doesn’t exist in g++ 4.6.1 on MinGW
  7. Building glew on windows with mingw
  8. wWinmain, Unicode, and Mingw
  9. How to convert char* to wchar_t*?
  10. Properly print utf8 characters in windows console
  11. OS specific instructions in CMAKE: How to?
  12. MinGW linker error: winsock
  13. Undefined reference to WinMain (C++ MinGW)
  14. power of an integer in c++ [duplicate]
  15. what is “stack alignment”?
  16. Linking to MSVC DLL from MinGW
  17. Program can’t find libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll [duplicate]
  18. How to enable experimental C++11 concurrency features in MinGW?
  19. How to solve ——-undefined reference to `__chkstk_ms’——-on mingw
  20. C++ mutex in namespace std does not name a type
  21. GCC C++ pow accuracy
  22. How to update GCC in MinGW on Windows?
  23. Static and Dynamic/Shared Linking with MinGW
  24. How to use the Windows API in MinGW?
  25. Undefined reference to google::protobuf::internal::empty_string_[abi:cxx11]
  26. libgmp-10.dll is missing
  27. C++ Serialization Performance
  28. c++11 std::async doesn’t work in mingw
  29. How to reduce the size of executable produced by MinGW g++ compiler?
  30. How do I get crtdbg.h file?

Leave a Comment