Installing LibXML2 & LibXMLmm on Windows

You may not use a path containing spaces or a bunch of weird things would happen
- If done, use mklink /D <name> <src> under cmd to make a link to actual directory and write PATH records using the path without spaces.
This may not be the best solution as it involves the use of both MSVC and GNU toolchain, just for troubleshooting.

LibXML2

This one is pretty easy though.

First make some modifications with CMakeLists.txt, turning off the dependencies you do not have and do not want to install. For me,

- option(LIBXML2_WITH_ICONV "Add ICONV support" ON)
+ option(LIBXML2_WITH_ICONV "Add ICONV support" OFF)

- option(LIBXML2_WITH_LZMA "Use liblzma" ON)
+ option(LIBXML2_WITH_LZMA "Use liblzma" OFF)

# This requires Python 2
- option(LIBXML2_WITH_PYTHON "Build Python bindings" ON)
+ option(LIBXML2_WITH_PYTHON "Build Python bindings" OFF)

- option(LIBXML2_WITH_TESTS "Build tests" ON)
+ option(LIBXML2_WITH_TESTS "Build tests" OFF)

- option(LIBXML2_WITH_ZLIB "Use libz" ON)
+ option(LIBXML2_WITH_ZLIB "Use libz" OFF)

And then, as always,

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -G <MSVC>
cmake --build .
cmake --install .

Then, add bin and lib/pkgconfig to your PATH. Slightly modify your lib/pkgconfig/libxml-2.0.pc:

Confirm prefix be the root directory of your libxml2
Change Libs line to Libs: "${libdir}/libxml2.lib"
- Actually there is a lib.private using -lws2_32 but it somehow did not make it fail so I left it as it is.

Notes

Not using MSVC config may bring in type conflict of time_t
Do not put build directory in your PATH, especially with priority higher than other ones like bin and lib!

LibXMLmm

Do the followings in git bash:

git clone [email protected]:rioki/libxmlmm.git
Replace all occurrences of pkg-config in configure to pkg-config.exe
- Do this if you encounter problem running pkg-config.exe libxml-2.0 --modversion
- For me:
```
$ which pkg-config.exe
/c/Users/ksyx/scoop/shims/pkg-config.exe
$ which pkg-config
/c/Strawberry/perl/bin/pkg-config
```
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PATH, this makes pkg-config search the directories we usually expect (PATHs)
`./configure --prefix="C:/libs/libxmlmm"
- Change the prefix to your working directory, but use Windows path style, not $(pwd) git bash gives you.
- Do NOT use backslash! This brings in problems!
Open libxmlmm.pc, change Libs line to Libs: "${libdir}/libxmlmm.a"

Have a try!

Note that you may need specifying something in the CMakeLists.txt. Download this test gist and run under root of repo:

mkdir bin && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles"
cmake --build .
cd ../bin
./test.exe
cat index.html

And you should get the same HTML as the example.

Congrats!

< Back to posts