Compiling UnrealIRCd on Windows

NOTE: This article is for experienced developers only. Everyone else should follow Installing (Windows) instead.

Should I compile myself?

The UnrealIRCd project provides precompiled binaries and an installer. If you're after something simple then see Installing (Windows).

If, however, you are a developer and want to compile UnrealIRCd yourself, then follow this article. Possible reasons for doing so:

1. You want to compile a 3rd party module on Windows
2. You want to tweak a compile-time setting (such as in include\config.h or include\struct.h)
3. You want to make source code changes

Which compilers are supported

The official UnrealIRCd releases are compiled with Visual Studio 2019 (also called Visual Studio 16.x). We suggest you use this version too. Visual Studio Community edition can be downloaded free of charge for personal use (and for open source projects) via https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/

Other compilers such as Cygwin or MinGW will not work and are not supported.

External libraries

UnrealIRCd uses a number of libraries. We already built them on Windows for you, so simply fetch the Windows external libraries for UnrealIRCd package and extract the .zip to c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs (in case of UnrealIRCd 6). This will result in directories like c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\libressl, c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\curl, etc.

Additional requirements

Put dlltool.exe (which is included in the windows external libraries package from above) somewhere in your path (eg: if you are lazy, simply put it in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32)

Compiling

Compiling UnrealIRCd 6

1. Start the Developer Command Prompt: Start - Visual Studio 2019 - Visual Studio Tools - VC - x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for targeting x64
2. Change to your UnrealIRCd compile directory, for example c:\dev\unrealircd-6.0.X
3. Create a file build.bat and put the following text into it:

nmake -f Makefile.windows ^
LIBRESSL_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\libressl\include" ^
LIBRESSL_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\libressl\lib" ^
SSLLIB="crypto.lib ssl.lib" ^
USE_REMOTEINC=1 ^
LIBCURL_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\curl\include" ^
LIBCURL_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\curl\builds\libcurl-vc-x64-release-dll-ssl-dll-cares-dll-ipv6-obj-lib" ^
CARES_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\c-ares\msvc\cares\dll-release" ^
CARES_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\c-ares\include" ^
CARESLIB="cares.lib" ^
PCRE2_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\pcre2\include" ^
PCRE2_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\pcre2\lib" ^
PCRE2LIB="pcre2-8.lib" ^
ARGON2_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\argon2\vs2015\build" ^
ARGON2_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\argon2\include" ^
ARGON2LIB="Argon2RefDll.lib" ^
SODIUM_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\libsodium\bin\x64\Release\v142\dynamic" ^
SODIUM_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\libsodium\src\libsodium\include" ^
SODIUMLIB="libsodium.lib" ^
JANSSON_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\jansson\lib" ^
JANSSON_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\jansson\include" ^
JANSSONLIB="jansson.lib" ^
GEOIPCLASSIC_LIB_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\GeoIP\libGeoIP" ^
GEOIPCLASSIC_INC_DIR="c:\dev\unrealircd-6-libs\GeoIP\libGeoIP" ^
GEOIPCLASSICLIB="GeoIP.lib" %*

Now let's compile:

build.bat
build.bat SYMBOLFILE
build.bat

It's normal for errors to appear the first time you run build.bat. You then run the command to update the SYMBOLFILE and then re-run build.bat.

Problems

• Again, it's normal for build.bat to fail the first time. See last sentence of previous section.

Compiling modules

IMPORTANT: Before you do this, you first need to compile UnrealIRCd, see previous section(s).

1. Start the developer command prompt (see previous section on how to do that)
2. Change to your UnrealIRCd compile directory, for example c:\dev\unrealircd-6.0.X
3. Put your module (the .c file) in src\modules\third, eg: c:\dev\unrealircd-6.0.X\src\modules\third\somemod.c
4. From the main c:\dev\unrealircd-6.0.X directory run the build.bat file the following way:

   build.bat CUSTOMMODULE MODULEFILE=mymod

   Naturally, replace mymod with the name of your module (without .c suffix!)
5. Done. You now have a DLL file in src\modules\third

In case you wonder, the way this works is that the build.bat contains %* at the end of the file, which allows us to pass command line parameters to it.

Creating an installer

In case you want to create an installer:

• Download and install Innosetup.
• Open and build src\windows\unrealinst.iss
• This will output to setup.exe, which you can distribute and run to install UnrealIRCd.