Re: [igraph] Building and installing C-Core and Python Interface under windows

[Tamas Nepusz]

Hi Winnie,

As far as I know, there are basically two options for compiling the C core
and the Python interface from scratch on Windows:

1. Use Microsoft Visual Studio to compile the C core and then use a version
of Python downloaded from python.org to compile the Python interface as well
(using the usual "python setup.py install" command, which will in turn use
Visual Studio of course).

2. Use Cygwin to compile the C core and use the version of Python supplied
within Cygwin (NOT a version from python.org) to compile the Python
interface (again, using "python setup.py install", which will use gcc from
Cygwin).

MinGW *might* work but I haven't tried it for a while so I can't comment on
that. However, I'm pretty sure that mixing an instance of Python from
python.org with a Cygwin-compiled C extension won't work.

The installers that we provide are built using option #1. Personally, I use
Microsoft Visual Studio Express to compile the C core. Note that we have an
MSVC tarball that you can download from the homepage -- this contains the
source code of the C core and a Microsoft Visual Studio project file that
should work as is using Visual Studio Express. Theoretically, all you have
to do is to open the project file, set the build mode to "Release" in Visual
Studio and then run "Build All" to compile the C interface. Once you have
done that, you need the source code of the Python interface, adjust
setup.cfg to make sure that the include files and the generated library
files can be found by Python when it runs the compilation, and then execute
"python setup.py install". If you get stuck somewhere, let me know and I'll
try to help if you go down this road.

Cheers,
Tamas