This chapter describes SWIG usage on Microsoft Windows. Installing SWIG and running the examples is covered as well as building the SWIG executable. Usage within the Unix like environments MinGW and Cygwin is also detailed.
SWIG does not come with the usual Windows type installation program, however it is quite easy to get started. The main steps are:
The swigwin distribution contains the SWIG Windows executable, swig.exe, which will run on 32 bit versions of Windows, ie Windows 95 and later. If you want to build your own swig.exe have a look at Building swig.exe on Windows.
Using Microsoft Visual C++ is the most common approach to compiling and linking SWIG's output. The Examples directory has a few Visual C++ project files (.dsp files). These were produced by Visual C++ 6. Later versions of Visual Studio should also be able to open and convert these project files. The C# examples come with .NET 2003 solution (.sln) and project files instead of Visual C++ 6 project files. The project files have been set up to execute SWIG in a custom build rule for the SWIG interface (.i) file. Alternatively run the examples using Cygwin.
More information on each of the examples is available with the examples distributed with SWIG (Examples/index.html).
Ensure the SWIG executable is as supplied in the SWIG root directory in order for the examples to work. Most languages require some environment variables to be set before running Visual C++. Note that Visual C++ must be re-started to pick up any changes in environment variables. Open up an example .dsp file, Visual C++ will create a workspace for you (.dsw file). Ensure the Release build is selected then do a Rebuild All from the Build menu. The required environment variables are displayed with their current values.
The list of required environment variables for each module language is also listed below. They are usually set from the Control Panel and System properties, but this depends on which flavour of Windows you are running. If you don't want to use environment variables then change all occurrences of the environment variables in the .dsp files with hard coded values. If you are interested in how the project files are set up there is explanatory information in some of the language module's documentation.
The C# examples do not require any environment variables to be set as a C# project file is included. Just open up the .sln solution file in Visual Studio .NET 2003 or later, select Release Build, and do a Rebuild All from the Build menu. The accompanying C# and C++ project files are automatically used by the solution file.
JAVA_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory containing jni.h
JAVA_BIN : Set this to the bin directory containing javac.exe
Example using JDK1.3:
JAVA_INCLUDE: D:\jdk1.3\include
JAVA_BIN: D:\jdk1.3\bin
PERL5_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory containing perl.h
PERL5_LIB : Set this to the Perl library including path for linking
Example using nsPerl 5.004_04:
PERL5_INCLUDE: D:\nsPerl5.004_04\lib\CORE
PERL5_LIB: D:\nsPerl5.004_04\lib\CORE\perl.lib
PYTHON_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory that contains python.h
PYTHON_LIB : Set this to the python library including path for linking
Example using Python 2.1.1:
PYTHON_INCLUDE: D:\python21\include
PYTHON_LIB: D:\python21\libs\python21.lib
TCL_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory containing tcl.h
TCL_LIB : Set this to the TCL library including path for linking
Example using ActiveTcl 8.3.3.3
TCL_INCLUDE: D:\tcl\include
TCL_LIB: D:\tcl\lib\tcl83.lib
R_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory containing R.h
R_LIB : Set this to the R library (Rdll.lib) including path for linking. The library needs to be built as described in the R README.packages file (the pexports.exe approach is the easiest).
Example using R 2.5.1:
R_INCLUDE: C:\Program Files\R\R-2.5.1\include
R_LIB: C:\Program Files\R\R-2.5.1\bin\Rdll.lib
RUBY_INCLUDE : Set this to the directory containing ruby.h
RUBY_LIB : Set this to the ruby library including path for linking
Example using Ruby 1.6.4:
RUBY_INCLUDE: D:\ruby\lib\ruby\1.6\i586-mswin32
RUBY_LIB: D:\ruby\lib\mswin32-ruby16.lib
If you do not have access to Visual C++ you will have to set up project files / Makefiles for your chosen compiler. There is a section in each of the language modules detailing what needs setting up using Visual C++ which may be of some guidance. Alternatively you may want to use Cygwin as described in the following section.
SWIG can also be compiled and run using Cygwin or MinGW which provides a Unix like front end to Windows and comes free with gcc, an ANSI C/C++ compiler. However, this is not a recommended approach as the prebuilt executable is supplied.
If you want to replicate the build of swig.exe that comes with the download, follow the MinGW instructions below. This is not necessary to use the supplied swig.exe. This information is provided for those that want to modify the SWIG source code in a Windows environment. Normally this is not needed, so most people will want to ignore this section.
The short abbreviated instructions follow...
The step by step instructions to download and install MinGW and MSYS, then download and build the latest version of SWIG from SVN follow... Note that the instructions for obtaining SWIG from SVN are also online at SWIG SVN.
Pitfall note: Execute the steps in the order shown and don't use spaces in path names. In fact it is best to use the default installation directories.
cd / tar -jxf msys-automake-1.8.2.tar.bz2 tar -jxf msys-autoconf-2.59.tar.bz2 tar -zxf bison-2.0-MSYS.tar.gz
mkdir /usr/src cd /usr/src svn co https://swig.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/swig/trunk swig
cd /usr/src/swig ./autogen.sh ./configure make
Note that SWIG can also be built using Cygwin. However, SWIG will then require the Cygwin DLL when executing. Follow the Unix instructions in the README file in the SWIG root directory. Note that the Cygwin environment will also allow one to regenerate the autotool generated files which are supplied with the release distribution. These files are generated using the autogen.sh script and will only need regenerating in circumstances such as changing the build system.
If you don't want to install Cygwin or MinGW, use a different compiler to build SWIG. For example, all the source code files can be added to a Visual C++ project file in order to build swig.exe from the Visual C++ IDE.
The examples and test-suite work as successfully on Cygwin as on any other Unix operating system. The modules which are known to work are Python, Tcl, Perl, Ruby, Java and C#. Follow the Unix instructions in the README file in the SWIG root directory to build the examples.
A common problem when using SWIG on Windows are the Microsoft function calling conventions which are not in the C++ standard. SWIG parses ISO C/C++ so cannot deal with proprietary conventions such as __declspec(dllimport), __stdcall etc. There is a Windows interface file, windows.i, to deal with these calling conventions though. The file also contains typemaps for handling commonly used Windows specific types such as __int64, BOOL, DWORD etc. Include it like you would any other interface file, for example:
%include <windows.i> __declspec(dllexport) ULONG __stdcall foo(DWORD, __int32);