Building SV v3.0 installers on Windows¶

Version 3.0 of Sonic Visualiser now has a 64-bit version for Windows. The 32-bit version is also still supported.

• The 64-bit version is built using Qt Creator with the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. Install 64-bit Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and then Qt 5.7 (or latest 5.x).

• The 32-bit version is built using Qt Creator with the MinGW compiler. Install Qt 5.7 (or latest 5.x) with Qt Creator and ensure that the 32-bit MinGW option is available.

• The official 64-bit installer also includes some helper binaries from the 32-bit build, enabling it to use 32-bit Vamp plugins as well as 64-bit ones. So to make a 64-bit installer, we actually have to complete both builds.

• The installers are built using WiX, so you must have that installed. The path to WiX is hardcoded in our build.cmd script and at the time of writing it assumes WiX v3.9.

In both cases (32 and 64 bit) the dependent libraries we use are found in the sv-dependency-builds subrepo which is now checked out as a matter of course with the SV repo. There should be no other external dependencies besides Qt and the runtime libraries it needs.

Which SV branch to use¶

Currently 3.0 release preparation is happening in the 3.0-integration branch, but when 3.0 is actually released, it will be merged to the default branch.

32-bit build and installer¶

Build¶

This process is similar to that introduced in v2.1 (see WindowsBuild21), except that we now do use a shadow build.

• Check out the correct branch (3.0-integration or default as described above)
• Open the main sonic-visualiser.pro project in Qt Creator
• Set up a release build using Desktop Qt 5.7.0 MinGW 32-bit as a shadow build
• "Run qmake" and "Rebuild All"

There is still one unresolved manual step before you can run Sonic Visualiser:

• Go to the build directory (e.g. build-sonic-visualiser-Desktop_Qt_5_7_0_MinGW_32bit-Release) and copy the file checker\release\vamp-plugin-load-checker.exe to the top-level release directory

You should now be able to run Sonic Visualiser from within the IDE. (You can't yet run the binary from the Windows Explorer, as Qt and other dependencies won't be found.)

Installer¶

The principle here is:

1. Copy dependent libraries into the release directory within the build dir, so that Sonic Visualiser can be run directly without IDE support
2. Package up the installer using the build.cmd script that runs WiX

For the Qt 5.7 installation I'm currently using, this means:

• From C:\Qt57\5.7\mingw53_32\bin, copy the following files into the release directory: Qt5Core.dll Qt5Gui.dll Qt5Network.dll Qt5Svg.dll Qt5Widgets.dll Qt5Xml.dll libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll libstdc++-6.dll libwinpthread-1.dll
• From C:\Qt57\5.7\mingw53_32\plugins\platforms, copy the following files: qminimal.dll qwindows.dll
• Check that the Sonic Visualiser executable in that directory starts up properly when double-clicked
• In a command prompt window, cd to the deploy\win32 directory in the Sonic Visualiser source tree and run .\build.cmd

Note that the build.cmd script has the path to the shadow build folder hardcoded, so you may need to tweak that.

64-bit build and installer¶

Build¶

• Check out the correct branch (3.0-integration or default as described above)
• Open the main sonic-visualiser.pro project in Qt Creator
• Set up a release build using Desktop Qt 5.7.0 MSVC 64-bit as a shadow build
• "Run qmake" and "Rebuild All"

If the build was successful, you should now be able to run Sonic Visualiser from within the IDE. (You can't yet run the binary from the Windows Explorer, as Qt and other dependencies won't be found.)

Installer¶

The 64-bit installer needs files from both the 64- and 32-bit builds.