Cross Compilation
Compiling under windows is quite tricky. Compiling for windows under a Linux environment is significantly easier. Easier still, we have automated the procedure to build windows executables via a technique known as Cross compiling. This technique is used for the official 3Depict builds.
To run the cross compilation script, you must first have an installed Debian-like Linux system. We recommend "Debian", however you can probably use Linux Mint or Ubuntu. We have not tried these.
For windows users, you can install a virtual machine to do the trick, then start the build. Make sure you allocate lots of RAM and disk space (>8GB ram or swap needed, >10GB disk space recommended), to ensure the build works. On older machines, you may need to enable virtual machine access in the system BIOS.
Procedure
Having downloaded the source code, copy the ./packaging/mingw-debian-cross/ folder to your home directory, eg /home/user/mingw-debian-cross/. Once done, create a folder called code inside mingw-debian-cross/. This is case sensitive. Copy the 3Depict folder into this mingw-debian-cross/code/ folder.
Now run the bootstrap.sh script to execute the cross-compilation - the process can take several hours on a standard system to execute a full build. On the first run you will be asked whether you wish to compile for 32 or 64 bit windows. Once complete, you will be given a 3Depict-VERSION-BIT.exe file that you can use under windows. It is highly likely that this process will fail at some point, and will need troubleshooting to resolve any issues.
To get the file out of your virtual machine, we recommend using a USB key. Plug the USB key in, then select it in your virtual machine, and copy the file over. It is possible to also do this by drag and drop onto your desktop, but you need to enable the virtual machine's guest additions. This can be a tricky process in itself, so it is not recommended. Many other methods of copying the file are possible, but not discussed here. Alternatley, one can test the resultant file in WINE, to see if the compilation was successful