Compiling MLDonkey for Windows

MLDonkey is a nifty program that helps you share files with other people. MLDonkey works on Linux, but the Windows version I downloaded didn't work on my computer running Windows XP. So I compiled MLDonkey using Cygwin's mingw64-i686-gcc-* compiler toolchain. Here I show how I did it. Part of the information below is taken from the MLDonkey Windows guide.

1. Install MinGW-w64.
2. Compile pthread.
3. Compile zlib and bzip2
   Download the zlib source (zlib-1.2.7.tar.gz) and unpack it.
   

   tar xzvf zlib-1.2.7.tar.gz
   cd zlib-1.2.7

   Compile and install zlib.
   

   make -f win32/Makefile.gcc
   cp -iv zlib1.dll /mingw/bin
   cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /mingw/include
   cp -iv libz.a /mingw/lib
   cp -iv libz.dll.a /mingw/lib

   Now download bzip2 source from bzip2.org and unpack it.
   

   tar xzvf bzip2-1.0.6.tar.gz
   cd bzip2-1.0.6

   Change line 78 of bzlib.h to read:
   

   #if defined(_WIN32) && !defined(__MINGW32__)

   Compile and install bzip2.
   

   make
   cp bzlib.h /mingw/include/
   cp libbz2.a /mingw/lib

4. libiconv
   Download and compile libiconv:
   

   tar xzvf libiconv-1.14.tar.gz
   cd libiconv-1.14
   ./configure --build=i686-w64-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --enable-static --disable-nls
   make
   make install

5. Optionally, compile the GD library.

6. wget
   Build wget as shown in this post. If you don't want to compile wget yourself, get the executable (wget.exe) somewhere, and put it in the same folder as mlnet.exe later.
7. regex and libmagic

   Compile regex as shown in this post. Then, compile libmagic as shown in this post.

8. OCaml
   You need flexdll (flexdll-0.27.zip) to build OCaml. Extract it to /mingw/bin. Then, download the latest OCaml source (3.12.1). Patch ocaml with this Unicode patch.
   

   tar xzvf ocaml-3.12.1.tar.gz
   cd ocaml-3.12.1
   patch -p1 -l < ../ocaml-3.12.1-unicode.patch

   In the config subfolder, copy Makefile.mingw to Makefile.

   cp config/m-nt.h config/m.h 
   cp config/s-nt.h config/s.h 
   cp config/Makefile.mingw config/Makefile 

   Begin compiling OCaml.
   

   make -f Makefile.nt world
   make -f Makefile.nt opt
   make -f Makefile.nt opt.opt
   make -f Makefile.nt install

   Set up OCaml environment variables:
   

   export CAMLLIB=C:/mingw/lib
   export OCAMLLIB=C:/mingw/lib
   export CAMLP4LIB=C:/mingw/lib/camlp4

9. Build MLDonkey
   Get the MLDonkey source, then unpack and configure it.
   

   tar xjvf mldonkey-3.1.0.tar.bz2
   cd mldonkey-3.1.0
   ./configure --build=i686-w64-mingw32 --prefix=/mingw --disable-fasttrack CPPFLAGS='-DPTW32_STATIC_LIB -D_REGEX_RE_COMP' LIBS='-lregex -lshlwapi -lz'

   

   Start compilation.

   export OCAML_SRC=~/ocaml-3.12.1
   cp -iv /mingw/lib/stublibs/dllunix.dll .
   make depend

   Open Makefile. On the mlnet.static line, replace -static with "-link -Wl,--subsystem,windows".

   make mlnet.static GD_LIBS='-lpng -ljpeg'
   strip mlnet.static 
   mv mlnet.static mlnet.exe

   If the final linking stage fails, here is the command I used to produce mlnet.exe:
   

   g++ -g0 -O3 -o mlnet.exe -Wl,--subsystem,windows -L/lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/4.5.3 -L/mingw/lib /tmp/camlstartup00193d.s build/flexdll_mingw.o /mingw/lib/std_exit.o src/daemon/common/commonMain.o build/driver.a build/core.a build/client.a build/common.a build/magic.a build/bitstring.a build/cdk.a build/extlib.a /mingw/lib/nums.a /mingw/lib/str.a /mingw/lib/unix.a /mingw/lib/bigarray.a /mingw/lib/stdlib.a src/utils/cdk/gdstubs.o src/networks/direct_connect/che3_c.o src/utils/lib/CryptoPP.o src/utils/lib/CryptoPP_stubs.o src/utils/net/upnp_stubs.o src/daemon/common/commonHasher_c.o src/utils/lib/magiclib_stub.o src/utils/bitstring/bitstring_c.o src/utils/cdk/zlibstubs.o src/utils/cdk/heap_c.o src/config/mingw/os_stubs_c.o src/utils/lib/fst_hash.o src/utils/lib/md4_comp.o src/utils/lib/md4_c.o src/utils/lib/charsetstubs.o src/utils/lib/md5_c.o src/utils/lib/sha1_c.o src/utils/lib/tiger.o src/utils/lib/stubs_c.o -lnums -lcamlstr -lunix -lbigarray -lgdi32 -luser32 -ladvapi32 -limm32 -lshell32 -lole32 resfile.o -lpthread -lmagic -lgd -ljpeg -lfreetype -lpng -lz -lbz2 -lws2_32 -lshlwapi /mingw/lib/libasmrun.a /mingw/lib/libcharset.dll.a /mingw/lib/libiconv.dll.a

   Optonally, compress the executable with upx.
   

   upx --best --strip-relocs=0 mlnet.exe

Here's my mldonkey builds.

• mldonkey-3.1.3-win32.zip
• mldonkey-3.1.0-win32.zip