NUT and MS Windows

Introduction

NUT is now also available for the Microsoft Windows platform.

This methodology (and Windows support in general) are currently experimental, so pull requests are welcome to tie up some loose ends (add more prerequisites, test and fix programs, re-enable some code just commented away by `ifdef`s…)

Note

It is possible to prepare a Windows machine with tools and prerequisites for building NUT natively, as detailed in docs/config-prereqs.txt and easily handled by NUT common ci_build.sh script. Most prerequisites are already packaged in that environment, but notably net-snmp is missing — but can be built from source following this document. Possibly, the instructions below would converge there over time to keep it simple.

For additional reference about prerequisite preparation and further ideas for the NUT for Windows effort, please see detailed report in the mailing list:

https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/nut-upsdev/2016-April/007171.html - [Nut-upsdev] How to build NUT Windows Port
https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/nut-upsdev/2016-April/007172.html - [Nut-upsdev] NUT Windows port sources review

Cross compiling from Linux

Fortunately, you are not forced to have a real Windows system to compile NUT. The following chapters will guide you through setting up up a MinGW-w64 build environment and compiling NUT.

Note

These instructions were re-verified (and codebase slightly amended) with an Ubuntu 21.10 container as the dedicated build environment. Support was added to NUT common ci_build.sh script to call the helper build-mingw-nut.sh from this directory when cross-building on Linux for Windows in the specially crafted sandbox (conformance is assumed), if you use one of BUILD_TYPE=cross-windows-mingw(-64|-32|) as this made NUT CI farm integration easier.

Note	The Ubuntu (20.04 or newer) environment provided by WSL2 also seems suitable for semi-native builds on a Windows system, following the same instructions. However, note that some builds may be broken or complicated by antivirus software (it really dislikes someone writing into EXE files).

Beside MinGW detailed below, you would need the usual dependencies to configure and build NUT (if you would bootstrap it from github sources rather than a tarball — without a pre-generated configure script). Notably, asciidoc with its many dependencies may be required for generation of man pages into the intermediate tarball used by script referenced below.

MinGW-w64 build environment

You will first need to setup a MinGW-w64 build environment.

Note	While adding `ccache` is optional, it is quite recommended especially if you plan to iterate many builds (whether of NUT or the dependencies). At least for Ubuntu 21.10 packaging, it is integrated with `mingw-w64` tool naming out of the box.

On Debian/Ubuntu and similar systems, use:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install mingw-w64

On Redhat and similar systems, use:

# ???

You will also need pthread and mingw regex libraries, and other recommended dependencies as detailed below.

Note

If you use script ./build-mingw-nut.sh mentioned below, you may skip setting these environment variables when building NUT. You would however need to use them once (per ARCH) to provide the prerequisites below if built from source.

When using the compilation approach, use the following HOST_FLAG, BUILD_FLAG and CC, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS and PREFIX:

prefer either to

:; export ARCH="x86_64-w64-mingw32"

or

:; export ARCH="i686-w64-mingw32"

(it can help to open two terminals and copy one ARCH into each and then the lines below into both of them; be sure to use separate directory trees for the unpacked build workspaces)

for either-ARCH build environment further set:

:; export HOST_FLAG="--host=$ARCH"
:; PREFIX="/usr/$ARCH"

NOTE: Technically, these instructions may apply to builds with MinGW on Windows semi-natively (e.g. to add the net-snmp libraries which are not packaged for MSYS2 MinGW currently). Generally you can use environment variables set by different launchers of MinGW terminal sessions depending on the target profile (32/64 bit, gcc/clang, libc implementation…)
- For sudo make install in instructions below, you may have to omit the sudo part if missing in your MSYS2 MinGW environment;
- For a "native build" directly for consumption in the currently configured environment, you would not use cross-build path in PREFIX and not set the HOST_FLAG value:
  :; export ARCH="$MINGW_CHOST" :; PREFIX="$MINGW_PREFIX" :; export HOST_FLAG=""
- If you wanted a "real cross-build" for a different MinGW environment, you might want to set those (but the NUT build would then need to be told to search for headers, libraries and pkg-config data in extra locations):
  :; export ARCH="$MINGW_CHOST" :; PREFIX="$MINGW_PREFIX/$ARCH" :; export HOST_FLAG="--host=$ARCH"
- You might want then to verify that it sets values you expect with a command like this:
  :; set | grep -E '^(ARCH|PREFIX|HOST_FLAG)=' #export ARCH="x86_64-w64-mingw32" #PREFIX="/mingw64/x86_64-w64-mingw32"
on Debian/Ubuntu style systems also:

:; BUILD_FLAG="--build=`dpkg-architecture -qDEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE`"

Note that this bit is very Debian specific! Hints for Redhat-style systems are wanted.
- also export the following compilation flags:

:; export CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -D_POSIX=1 -I${PREFIX}/include/"
:; export CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS -D_POSIX=1 -I${PREFIX}/include/"
:; export LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -L${PREFIX}/lib/"
:; export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="${PREFIX}"/lib/pkgconfig

prepare the download and build area, e.g. to match copy-paste instructions below, it would be like:

:; DLDIR=~/nut-win-deps
:; WSDIR="$DLDIR"/"$ARCH"
:; mkdir -p "$WSDIR" "$DLDIR"

pthread library

Note	The MinGW distribution in Ubuntu 21.10 already includes pthread files, so the build instructions below were not relevant for this component.

On older Debian systems, you can use the following packages repository: MinGW PPA

However at the moment this PPA seems to be stale and serve very old packages, so it could be better to roll your own as detailed below.

On Redhat: FIXME

You can also compile it (where that is still needed) using:

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c http://mirrors.kernel.org/sources.redhat.com/pthreads-win32/pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release.tar.gz
:; cd pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release/
:; make -f GNUmakefile "CROSS=$ARCH-" $BUILD_FLAG GC-inlined
:; sudo cp *.dll ${PREFIX}/pthreads/lib/
:; sudo cp *.a ${PREFIX}/lib/
:; sudo cp pthread.h sched.h semaphore.h ${PREFIX}/pthreads/include

MinGW regex library

You can compile it using:

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c http://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mingw/Other/UserContributed/regex/mingw-regex-2.5.1/mingw-libgnurx-2.5.1-src.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/mingw-libgnurx-2.5.1-src.tar.gz
:; cd mingw-libgnurx-2.5.1
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

libtool (libltdl)

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libtool/libtool-2.4.6.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libtool-2.4.6.tar.gz
:; cd libtool-2.4.6
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

libusb

libusb-1.0

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-1.0/libusb-1.0.26/libusb-1.0.26.tar.bz2 )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xjf "$DLDIR"/libusb-1.0.26.tar.bz2
:; cd libusb-1.0.26
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

libusb-compat-0.1 (API translation layer for older codebase, uses libusb-1.0)

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://github.com/libusb/libusb-compat-0.1/archive/refs/heads/master.zip -O libusb-compat-0.1-master.zip )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; unzip "$DLDIR"/libusb-compat-0.1-master.zip
:; cd libusb-compat-0.1-master
:; ./bootstrap.sh
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

zlib

Needed for libpng at least, but likely many others too.

Note	On recent Debian/Ubuntu systems, you might have luck with: :; sudo apt-get install libz-mingw-w64-dev

On any system, you can build from source; however the current version has a nuance to address for mingw builds:

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c -O zlib-1.2.12.tar.gz https://github.com/madler/zlib/archive/refs/tags/v1.2.12.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/zlib-1.2.12.tar.gz
:; cd zlib-1.2.12

# Edit the `configure` script (not autotools generated) to
# neuter the MINGW `leave 1` line:
  MINGW* | mingw*)
# temporary bypass
        rm -f $test.[co] $test $test$shared_ext
        echo "Please use win32/Makefile.gcc instead." | tee -a configure.log
-       leave 1
+       ###leave 1
        LDSHARED=${LDSHARED-"$cc -shared"}
        LDSHAREDLIBC=""
        EXE='.exe' ;;

:; CHOST="$ARCH" ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX"
:; make
:; sudo make install

openssl

OpenSSL is an optional dependency for NUT itself (it or Mozilla NSS can be used to protect the networking communications), and for libneon below (OpenSSL or GnuTLS).

Note the non-standard config script bundled along, and hoops to jump through…

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1q.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/openssl-1.1.1q.tar.gz
:; cd openssl-1.1.1q
# Build options partially lifted from OBS packaging, see:
# https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/windows:mingw:win32/mingw32-openssl-1_1/mingw32-openssl-1_1.spec?expand=1
:; ( case "$ARCH" in
     *x86_64*) SYSTEM=MINGW64 ;;
     *i?86*) SYSTEM=MINGW32 ;;
     *) SYSTEM=MINGW ;;
     esac
     export SYSTEM
     ./config \
        no-idea enable-rfc3779 zlib shared \
        -fno-common \
        --prefix="$PREFIX" --cross-compile-prefix="/usr/bin/$ARCH-" \
        -DPURIFY -D__USE_GNU
   )
:; make
:; sudo make install

xz (liblzma)

Needed for libxml2.

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://tukaani.org/xz/xz-5.2.5.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/xz-5.2.5.tar.gz
:; cd xz-5.2.5
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

libxml2

Needed for libneon.

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/archive/v2.9.14/libxml2-v2.9.14.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libxml2-v2.9.14.tar.gz
:; cd libxml2-v2.9.14
:; ./autogen.sh --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG --without-python
:; make
:; sudo make install

gd (cgi)

Note that for the general-case build libgd supports a huge dependency tree, so for the NUT purposes we are going for as little as possible.

Initially the purpose was to have libgd installed to build/link against for the Windows target. Subsequently more dependencies were documented, but still further refinement may be needed to have it actually usable for CGI web pages rendering.

Finally note that end-users would have to install a CGI-capable web server to use this feature in practice.

zlib: see above

iconv:

Seems to be directly used by libgd (at least queried in its configure script):

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.17.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libiconv-1.17.tar.gz
:; cd libiconv-1.17
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

freetype:

Note	For some reason it won’t build in an Ubuntu 20.04 running under WSL2 — blocks running an `apinames.exe` program that it has just built. May be a problem of the emulation layer (as it calls the EXE via `/tools/init`), and/or of the system antivirus interaction?..

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.12.1.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/freetype-2.12.1.tar.gz
:; cd freetype-2.12.1
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG --without-brotli
:; make
:; sudo make install

libpng:

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://download.sourceforge.net/libpng/libpng-1.6.37.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libpng-1.6.37.tar.gz
:; cd libpng-1.6.37
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

libgd itself:

TODO: This works for 64-bit builds, however 32-bit ones are burdened with @8 or @12 suffixes to symbol names, and subsequent link checks in NUT fail to find libgd as usable — so CGI is not built in 32-bit mode. According to such context, this must be something about STDCALL and/or "extern C"…

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://github.com/libgd/libgd/releases/download/gd-2.3.3/libgd-2.3.3.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libgd-2.3.3.tar.gz
:; cd libgd-2.3.3
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG \
    --with-png --with-freetype \
    --without-tiff --without-jpeg --without-xpm \
    --without-fontconfig
# Note: currently we configure away almost all capabilities,
# to match the dependency binaries (and/or headers) present
# on the build system. Review resulting build recipes that
# they DO NOT refer to system /usr/include locations!
# In practice we would likely need the fontconfig pieces to work.
:; make
:; sudo make install

libmodbus

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://libmodbus.org/releases/libmodbus-3.1.7.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/libmodbus-3.1.7.tar.gz
:; cd libmodbus-3.1.7
:; ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG
:; make
:; sudo make install

net-snmp

:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && wget -c https://sourceforge.net/projects/net-snmp/files/net-snmp/5.9.1/net-snmp-5.9.1.tar.gz )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; tar xzf "$DLDIR"/net-snmp-5.9.1.tar.gz
:; cd net-snmp-5.9.1
:; yes "" | ./configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG \
    --with-default-snmp-version=3 --disable-agent --disable-daemon \
    --with-sys-contact="" --with-sys-location="" --with-logfile=none \
    --with-persistent-directory="${PREFIX}/var/net-snmp" \
    --disable-embedded-perl --without-perl-modules --disable-perl-cc-checks \
    --enable-shared
# NOTE: ./configure script may ask a few questions, or may just print
# a banner that it would; hopefully all replies needed for current
# version are covered above
# The following long `LDFLAGS` ensure that shared `libnetsnmp-40.dll`
# gets built and later installed (and siblings which NUT does not use):
:; make LDFLAGS="-no-undefined -lws2_32 -lregex -Xlinker --ignore-unresolved-symbol=_app_name_long -Xlinker --ignore-unresolved-symbol=app_name_long"
:; find . -type f -name '*.dll' -o -name '*.dll.a'
:; sudo make install

Note

net-snmp tends to only make a static-linking library for Windows by default (the shared library only appears with LDFLAGS proposed above). In this case consumers must link not only with -lnetsnmp but also its dependencies explicitly — see Libs.private line in netsnmp.pc of your build (or installation in ${PREFIX}/lib/pkgconfig/netsnmp.pc). Builds can extract this info with pkg-config --libs --static netsnmp as NUT scenarios do (for mingw, if shared-linking attempt fails).

libneon

As of release 0.32.2 libneon failed to build — neither in Windows MSYS2 nor in Linux mingw environments. Some tinkering was needed to make it happen, and was posted as notroj/neon#84 (pull request sourced from https://github.com/jimklimov/neon/tree/fix-mingw-cross branch). Due to this, instructions below differ from others by setting up an out-of-tree build instead of a tarball download. Eventually it would hopefully suffice to fetch https://notroj.github.io/neon/neon-0.32.5.tar.gz or newer (PR was merged after libneon 0.32.4 release).

Note

Ability to make docs here relies on presence of xmlto program. In NUT CI workers prepared according to docs/config-prereqs.txt this should be among dependencies for asciidoc; beware that with prerequisites it has quite a large installation footprint. Alternately check PR #69, or consult the Makefiles for current install target definition to run its job without install-docs part (example posted below).

#:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && git clone -b fix-mingw-cross https://github.com/jimklimov/neon neon-git )
:; ( cd "$DLDIR" && git clone https://github.com/notroj/neon neon-git )
:; ( cd "$DLDIR/neon-git" && ./autogen.sh )
:; cd "$WSDIR"
:; rm -rf neon-git ; mkdir neon-git
:; cd neon-git
:; "$DLDIR"/neon-git/configure --prefix="$PREFIX" $HOST_FLAG \
    --enable-shared --with-ssl=openssl
:; make all docs
:; sudo make install \
   || sudo make install-lib install-headers install-config install-nls ###install-docs

Other requirements

ipmi, ssl with Mozilla NSS…

https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freeipmi/freeipmi-1.6.9.tar.gz
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/security/nss/releases/NSS_3_79_RTM/src/nss-3.79-with-nspr-4.34.tar.gz

Cross-building NUT with MinGW in Linux

After preparing at least the required dependencies above, use one of the following methods to compile NUT as:

out-of-tree from git source (easier to iterate for development, so default):

(cd scripts/Windows/ && ./build-mingw-nut.sh all64)

or, depending on the build environment(s) you have prepared,

(cd scripts/Windows/ && ./build-mingw-nut.sh all32)

Note

This is also automated for common NUT CI build script, calling it like this:

# Try to guess bitness based on ARCH or CFLAGS:
BUILD_TYPE=cross-windows-mingw ./ci_build.sh

# Or specifically:
BUILD_TYPE=cross-windows-mingw-32 ./ci_build.sh
BUILD_TYPE=cross-windows-mingw-64 ./ci_build.sh

an existing source tarball (can be fetched from NUT website):

:; export SOURCEMODE=stable
### Optionally: export VER_OPT=2.8.1
:; cd scripts/Windows/
:; ./build-mingw-nut.sh

To (re-)build from scratch with a dist tarball, e.g. testing how a stable release would fare, starting from a git checkout, use this:
```
:; ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make dist && \
    (cd scripts/Windows/ && SOURCEMODE=dist ./build-mingw-nut.sh all64)
```

If everything goes fine, you will find a NUT installation tree in nut_install sub-directory. Note the script accepts some parameters e.g. for 32/64 bit build targets.

Note

For other ways of building and packaging, it might make sense for a packaged delivery to also make install DESTDIR=.../nut_install from the sources of dependency projects built above, or at least to copy the built *.dll files from ${PREFIX}/bin to nut_install/bin. For those dependencies that are listed above, the script does this best-effort activity (does not fail if some are missing, but running the programs can fail later).

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README.adoc

README.adoc

NUT and MS Windows

Introduction

Cross compiling from Linux

MinGW-w64 build environment

pthread library

MinGW regex library

libtool (libltdl)

libusb

zlib

openssl

xz (liblzma)

libxml2

gd (cgi)

libmodbus

net-snmp

libneon

Other requirements

Cross-building NUT with MinGW in Linux

Files

README.adoc

Latest commit

History

README.adoc

File metadata and controls

NUT and MS Windows

Introduction

Cross compiling from Linux

MinGW-w64 build environment

pthread library

MinGW regex library

libtool (libltdl)

libusb

zlib

openssl

xz (liblzma)

libxml2

gd (cgi)

libmodbus

net-snmp

libneon

Other requirements

Cross-building NUT with MinGW in Linux