Using OMNeT++ 3.x with MinGW

(:title Using OMNeT++ 3.x with MinGW :)

NOTE: These instructions refer to the older 3.x versions of OMNeT++. 4.x releases already contain MinGW and the necessary libraries.

1. Install required software: MSYS and MinGW; Windows ports of bison and flex (UnxUtils versions are fine); Tcl/Tk; BLT; Perl. LibXML/LibXSLT or at least Expat is also recommended. Optional libraries: Akaroa, MPI.

You need to compile OMNeT++ from source, as the libs in the Windows binary version are for Visual C++ and they are not compatible with MinGW. The procedure is essentially the same as on Linux, except that the compilation environment has to be set up first.

(:title Using OMNeT++ with MinGW :)

Installation instructions in a nutshell

You need to compile OMNeT++ from source, as the libs in the Windows binary version are for Visual C++ and they are not compatible with MinGW.

If you are unsure or have run into trouble, please read the detailed instructions.

Installation instructions in nutshell:

1. Install required software: MSYS and MinGW; Windows ports of bison and flex (UnxUtils versions are fine); Tcl/Tk; Perl; Gnuplot. LibXML/LibXSLT or at least Expat is also recommended. Optional libraries: Akaroa, MPI.
2. Make sure bison, flex, and Tcl/Tk are in the PATH, and the following variables are set correctly: BISON_SIMPLE, TCL_LIBRARY.
3. Download OMNeT++ source package and unpack it (say into c:\omnetpp).
4. Add c:\omnetpp\bin your PATH.
5. Edit c:\omnetpp\configure.user according to your system. Use Windows-style path names with *forward* slashes (/). If a directory name contains space, use the short name (like C:/PROGRA~1).
6. Then fire up the MSYS shell and type the usual GNU stuff: ./configure, make. If make goes through, you've made it!
7. Try that the sample simulations, gned, nedtool and opp_makemake work.

If you get stuck at some step, refer to the detailed instructions below.

MinGW issues

(:title Installation issues on MinGW :)

If this is your first time installing OMNeT++ in MinGW or Cygwin, you should probably read doc/Readme.MinGW (or .Cygwin) in the OMNeT++ source distribution first. Yes, you'll need to compile OMNeT++ from source -- the libs in the Windows binary version are for Visual C++, and they are not compatible with Windows ports of gcc.

Problem with gcc 3.4.4 (cygming special)

OMNeT++ 3.2 does not compile with this version of gcc. gcc --version displays the version number of your gcc.

As there is no problem with several other gcc versions (gcc-4.0.1 , gcc-3.4.0 , gcc-3.3.5 on Linux, gcc-3.3.3 (cygwin special), gcc-3.2.3 (mingw special), gcc-3.3.3 (linux ia64)) and with C++ compilers from other vendors (the Intel compiler, Visual C++), this can be safely considered a compiler bug. Please install another version of gcc.

Cygwin: simulation programs crash on exit

We have observed this when compiling OMNeT++ with gcc 3.3.3 (cygwin special) and release CFLAGS (-O2 -DNDEBUG=1) which is the default configure.user setting. Recompiling everything with debug CFLAGS (-g -Wall) seems to make the problem go away. The crash doesn't occur on other platforms (MSVC, gcc on Linux) so it is likely caused by a bug in the Cygwin port of gcc.

BLT for MinGW

TBD