We support builds via MingGW and via Visual Studio Community 2013.

Both should be considered experimental (MinGW was better tested)!

## Building via MingGW (makefiles)

First grab the latest [MinGW for windows] [1] installer. Once it is installed, you can click on continue or open the Installation Manager via `bin\mingw-get.exe`.

You need to have the following components installed:

![Visualization of components installed in the interface](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/282293/5525466/947bf396-89e6-11e4-841d-4aa916f14de1.png)

Next we need to install [git for windows] [2]. You probably want to check the option to add it to the global path, but you do not need to install the unix tools.

If you want to run the spec test-suite you also need [ruby] [3] and a few gems available. Grab the [latest installer] [3] and make sure to add it the global path. Then install the missing gems:

```bash

gem install minitest

```

### Mount the mingw root directory

As mentioned in the [MinGW Getting Started](http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started#toc5) guide, you should edit `C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\etc\fstab` to contain the following line:

```

C:\MinGW   /mingw

```

### Starting a "MingGW" console

Create a batch file with this content:

```bat

@echo off

set PATH=C:\MinGW\bin;%PATH%

REM only needed if not already available

set PATH=%PROGRAMFILES%\git\bin;%PATH%

REM C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat

cmd

```

Execute it and make sure these commands can be called: `git`, `mingw32-make`, `rm` and `gcc`! Once this is all set, you should be ready to compile `libsass`!

### Get the sources

```bash

# using git is preferred

git clone https://github.com/sass/libsass.git

# only needed for sassc and/or testsuite

git clone https://github.com/sass/sassc.git libsass/sassc

git clone https://github.com/sass/sass-spec.git libsass/sass-spec

```

### Decide for static or shared library

`libsass` can be built and linked as a `static` or as a `shared` library. The default is `static`. To change it you can set the `BUILD` environment variable:

```bat

set BUILD="shared"

```

### Compile the library

```bash

mingw32-make -C libsass

```

### Results can be found in

```bash

$ ls libsass/lib

libsass.a  libsass.dll  libsass.so

```

### Run the spec test-suite

```bash

mingw32-make -C libsass test_build

```

## Building via MingGW 64bit (makefiles)

Building libass to dll on window 64bit.

+ downloads  [MinGW64 for windows7 64bit](http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains%20targetting%20Win64/Personal%20Builds/mingw-builds/4.9.2/threads-win32/seh/x86_64-4.9.2-release-win32-seh-rt_v3-rev0.7z/download) , and unzip to "C:\mingw64".

+ Create a batch file with this content:

```bat

@echo off

set PATH=C:\mingw64\bin;%PATH%

set CC=gcc

REM only needed if not already available

set PATH=%PROGRAMFILES%\Git\bin;%PATH%

REM C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat

cmd

```

+ By default , mingw64 dll will depends on "​m​i​n​g​w​m​1​0​.​d​l​l​、​ ​l​i​b​g​c​c​_​s​_​d​w​2​-​1​.​d​l​l​" , we can modify Makefile to fix this:(add "-static")

``` bash

lib/libsass.dll: $(COBJECTS) $(OBJECTS) $(RCOBJECTS)

	$(MKDIR) lib

	$(CXX) -shared $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $(COBJECTS) $(OBJECTS) $(RCOBJECTS) $(LDLIBS) -s -static -Wl,--subsystem,windows,--out-implib,lib/libsass.a

```

+ Compile the library

```bash

mingw32-make -C libsass

```

By the way , if you are using java jna , [JNAerator](http://jnaerator.googlecode.com/) is a good tool.

## Building via Visual Studio Community 2013

Open a Visual Studio 2013 command prompt:

- `VS2013 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt`

Note: When I installed the community edition, I only got the 2012 command prompts. I copied them from the Startmenu to the Desktop and adjusted the paths from `Visual Studio 11.0` to `Visual Studio 12.0`. Since `libsass` uses some `C++11` features, you need at least a MSVC 2013 compiler (v120).

### Get the source

```bash

# using git is preferred

git clone https://github.com/sass/libsass.git

git clone https://github.com/sass/sassc.git libsass/sassc

# only needed if you want to run the testsuite

git clone https://github.com/sass/sass-spec.git libsass/sass-spec

```

### Compile sassc

Sometimes `msbuild` seems not available from the command prompt. Just search for it and add it to the global path. It seems to be included in the .net folders too.

```bat

cd libsass

REM set PATH=%PATH%;%PROGRAMFILES%\MSBuild\12.0\Bin

msbuild /m:4 /p:Configuration=Release win\libsass.sln

REM running the spec test-suite manually (needs ruby and minitest gem)

ruby sass-spec\sass-spec.rb -V 3.4 -c win\bin\sassc.exe -s --impl libsass sass-spec/spec

cd ..

```

[1]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/latest/download?source=files

[2]: https://msysgit.github.io/

[3]: http://rubyinstaller.org/