Installing/Windows Build

This document describes how to build SUMO under MS-Windows using only freely available (this does not mean "open source") tools. Instructions on how to build SUMO on Windows using an Open Source toolchain are included in our building on Linux pages. Please note that You may also download pre-build Windows binaries.

Please read the whole document before you start, there are some detours and shortcuts included.

If you do not need the GUI, you can skip everything concerning Fox. If you do not need precise geodata conversion, you can skip everything concerning GDAL, Proj and FWTools.


 * Download Visual C++ 2010 Express Edition (or a newer one). (There is no need to install a separate Platform SDK any longer.) If you are using Windows 8 be sure to download Visual Studio Express for Windows Desktop and not Visual Studio Express for Windows 8.
 * Download Python for Windows and install it. It is used to dynamically include the SVN revision into compilation. (The build will work without it, but you may see nasty warnings and even editor windows popping up.) Python 3 won't work, we use Python 2.7.
 * Download the Xerces-C prebuilt binaries for your Visual Studio version (for VS 2010 you need the *windows-vc-10.0.zip), the Fox sources (Version 1.6.36 is confirmed to work) and either the FWTools (Version 1.1.3 should work) or PROJ and GDAL sources separately. You may also try the binary packages provided at http://www.gisinternals.com/sdk/
 * Note on installation paths: MSVC seems to have difficulties with include and library paths containing spaces (for instance C:\Program Files). Thus try to avoid installing any of the following libraries in such paths.

Please note that for compiling from svn either Python has to be installed on your system (which is a good idea, because also many SUMO tools are Python scripts) or you have to undefine HAVE_VERSION_H in src/windows_config.h.

Xerces-C
Up to (and including) SUMO 0.10.3 (precisely up to svn revision 6993) SUMO used Xerces-C 2.8 by default, now it uses Xerces-C 3.0.1. The changes needed to compile with a different Xerces version should be limited to changing src/windows_config.h, build/msvc10/Win32.props and / or build/msvc10/x64.props. set XERCES=D:\libs\xerces-c-3.1.1-x86-windows-vc-10.0.
 * You just need to install the binary Xerces 3.1.1 distribution or its 64bit version for the 64bit build.
 * Create a environment variable XERCES pointing to your xerces-c directory, e.g.
 * Copy dll-files  and   to some directory which is in your PATH (last resort: into Windows' system32 directory).
 * For the 64bit build the name of the variable is XERCES_64

Fox
set FOX16=D:\libs\fox-1.6.36.
 * If you do not need a GUI, you can skip this section.
 * Up to (and including) SUMO 0.10.3 (precisely up to svn revision 7025) SUMO used Fox 1.4, now it uses Fox 1.6. The building instructions are the same just replace 1.6 by 1.4 (and FOX16 by FOX14) wherever you need it.
 * Go to the Fox directory and open the VC project e.g. D:\libs\fox-1.6.36\windows\vcpp\win32.dsw.
 * Confirm the conversion to VC 10.0 and build the foxdll project as "release and debug" (if you think you might wish to use the Visual Studio debugger) version. If you want to build for the 64bit platform you need to add a new configuration to the foxdll project using the Configuration Manager.
 * You might get approximately 240 warnings and one error, which can be ignored.
 * Errors on not finding windows.h mean the SDK was not installed properly.
 * Create an environment variable FOX16 pointing to your Fox directory, e.g.
 * Copy dll-files  and   to some directory which is in your PATH (last resort: into Windows' system32 directory).

PNG support in Fox

 * Warning: This is a little advanced, we were successful with libpng 1.5.2 and zlib 1.2.5
 * download zlib sources and libpng sources from
 * unzip all zips
 * there is no need to build zlib
 * build pnglib by first adapting the path in \projects\vstudio\zlib.props and then use the vstudio.sln from the same dir to build the libpng project
 * you will get a png lib and a dll in \projects\vstudio\Debug\
 * if you want to be really sure, you can build the pngtest project as well and check the output
 * Open the Fox project solution and edit properties of foxdll
 * in the C++/General section add the dir to the include path
 * in the C++/Preprocessor section add the HAVE_PNG_H define
 * in the Linker/Input section add the .lib file to the input
 * recompile fox and put the resulting dll together with libpng dll in your path

JPEG support in Fox
nmake /f makefile.vc setup-v10 nmake /f makefile.vc
 * Warning: This is a little advanced, we were successful with jpeg 8d, the jpeg 8c which can be found at the fox-toolkit site was broken
 * download libjpeg sources from and unzip it
 * open a visual studio command prompt, cd to the jpeg dir and execute
 * you will get a libjpeg lib (and no dll!) in the dir
 * Open the Fox project solution and edit properties of foxdll
 * in the C++/General section add the dir to the include path
 * in the C++/Preprocessor section add the HAVE_JPEG_H define
 * in the Linker/Input section add the .lib file to the input
 * recompile foxdll (see above) and put the resulting dll (which has jpeg support linked statically inside) in your path

PROJ and GDAL
If you do not need transformation of geocoordinates you can disable PROJ and GDAL in build/msvc10/Win32.props and / or build/msvc10/x64.props (remove the UserMacros lines referencing the relevant *.lib files and remove the Preprocessor definitions HAVE_PROJ and/or HAVE_GDAL) and skip this section. Otherwise you have the choice between downloading the binary packages by Tamas Szekeres (preferred choice), the FWTools distribution (a little outdated) or compiling for yourself (for the adventurous). Building from source should only be necessary if you want a 64bit build or if you want to ship a copy of the SUMO executable(s) without the need to ship the FWTools as well.

Tamas Szekeres binary packages at http://www.gisinternals.com/sdk/

 * Choose the latest stable release and then the binaries zip and the libs zip (links valid for MSVC10 as of 26/2/2013)
 * unzip the zips in a directory of your choice (lets say D:\libs\proj_gdal) and set PROJ_GDAL=D:\libs\proj_gdal.
 * Add  to your PATH (or copy the contents to some directory in your PATH).

FWTools
set PROJ_GDAL=D:\libs\FWTools1.1.3.
 * Just execute the binary and select a target directory.
 * Create a environment variable PROJ_GDAL pointing to that directory, e.g.
 * Add  to your PATH (or copy the contents to some directory in your PATH).

Building from source
If you want to build PROJ and GDAL yourself for some reason, please follow the relevant build instructions for PROJ and for GDAL. You then should install in a common directory and let the PROJ_GDAL variable point to it as above. You should also copy proj.dll and gdal*.dll to a directory in your PATH.

If you do or download a 64bit build, the name of the environment variable needs to be PROJ_GDAL_64.

Configuration

 * If you installed all libraries and defined the environment variables correctly there is no need for further configuration and you can skip to the build section.
 * The Visual Studio build is configured using .props files in the build/msvc10 subdirectory. If you change some settings which should apply to all subprojects, be sure to edit those files (either with a text editor or the property manager of Visual Studio) and not the project configuration (.vcxproj).
 * If you do not like to define the places of the includes and libraries via environment variables you can enter the location directly into x64.props or Win32.props (or both, depending on your target platforms). You should also disable PROJ and GDAL in those files (if you don't need them) by setting the value for the appropriate "LIB" Usermacro to the empty string.

Build

 * Open the project sumo\build\msvc10\prj.sln and build the configurations you need.

Linker reports something similar to "LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'C:\Program.obj'"
You probably have installed a library to a path containing white spaces in its name. In such a case, the according environment variable should be embedded in quotes ("). Example: set FOX="D:\my libs\fox-1.6.36".

Failure on pre-build event
If Visual Studio reports a failed pre-build event you can safely ignore this, unless you are building from the subversion repository. In this case you should probably install Python. Even if python is installed the file associations may be broken which causes the generation of src/version.h vial tools/build/version.py to fail. Either repair your file associations or undefine HAVE_VERSION_H in src/windows_config.h