Recently, I wrote this tutorial in German for my Web site gimpusers.de. You can view it here: http://www.gimpusers.de/tutorials/compile-gimp-for-windows.html. There are also images illustrating each step and links in a box on the right side. So, please have a look at the original version.

I appreciate any comments here and of course on gimpusers.de

Original tutorial: http://www.gimpusers.de/tutorials/compile-gimp-for-windows.html
Translated tutorial:

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People who are interested in the development process of GIMP and maybe even want to participate, need an up-to-date development version and must know how to compile it. This tutorial explains how to do so in a Windows environemnt (it's much easier with Linux, e.g. Ubuntu Linux).
Warning: This is only for guys who like to play around and try something new. There is no official support etc. for these GIMP binaries.

• At first, we need an environment which allows us to compile GIMP: [ac=minimalist GNU for Windows]MinGW[/ac]. We download MinGW 5.0.3 (MinGW-5.0.3.exe) from the MinGW download page on Sourceforge.
  
  Then we install MinGW. The important steps after launching the installation file:
  1) Download & install
  2) Accept license
  3) "Current" - download current stable version
  4) Install components: "MinGW base tools", "MinGW Make" and "g++ compiler"
  5) Path: C:\MinGW (of course you can choose any path, but this tutorial and the script gimp-dep.sh which is mentioned below is tuned for this path)
  6) Install
  
• Some other tools are required, too. They are contained in [ab=minimal system]MSYS[ab] which is a part of MinGW. To compile MSYS:
  
  1) Download MSYS-1.0.10.exe from the MinGW download page and run it
  2) Install, again use the default path: C:\msys\1.0
  3) During the installation, a console window will appear and ask some questions:
  "Do you wish to continue with the post install?" => "y"
  "Do you have MinGW installed?" => "y"
  "Where is your MinGW installation?" => "c:/mingw" ("/", not "\"!)
  
• To compile GIMP, we also need PERL. At best we use ActiveState PERL; just download und run the most recent Windows installer for ActivePerl.
  
  It is very important that the compile tools including PERL are really working when run from the command line. To test this, run "gcc" and "perl" on the Windows shell. "Command or file not found" means that the PATH variable has to be adjusted:
  
  My Computer/Properties (or [Win]+[Pause]) / Advanced / Environment variables / User variables for ... / New, name: "PATH", value: "c:\mingw;C:\Mingw\bin;C:\mingw\mingw32\bin; c:\msys\1.0\bin;c:\perl\bin"
  (Note: I don't have an English Windows version, so I'm not sure about the correct menu names. To see what I mean, have a look at the image to step 3 on the original tutorial.)
  
  To be on the safe side, we also set PKG_CONFIG_PATH: Again create a new variable: name "PKG_CONFIG_PATH", value: "C:\MinGW\lib\pkgconfig" (this will be needed later)
  
• Download wget and unzip for Windows.
  unzip: Go to http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/unzip.htm, download unzip-5.51-1-bin.zip and extract it directly to c:\mingw (not into a subdirectory).
  wget: http://pages.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html, download wgetwin-1_5_3_1-binary.zip and extract wget.exe directly into c:\mingw
  
• Download the GIMP source code (development version from the FTP, here gimp-2.3.10.tar.bz2) and extract it to C:\gimp. Then the source should be accessible at c:\gimp\gimp-2.3.10
  
  Also copy the script gimp-dep.sh (download: gimp-dep.sh, see right upper box in original tutorial for another download link) and put it into c:\gimp. It is a modified script (orginal version in the GIMP wiki) which downloads and extracts the libraries needed to compile and run GIMP (gtk etc.).
  
• Launch MSYS (start menu: MinGW / MSYS / msys). Then change directory to c:\gimp and execute the gimp-dep script:
  
  [t]cd /c/gimp
  sh gimp-dep.sh[/t]
  
  The script should download all needed files to c:\temp (this directory must exist and be writeable!) and extract them to C:\MinGW.
  
  Because the script was written by "someone" and I have modified it, it may be possible (although it shouldn't) that some lines must be adjusted/corrected. Basically, it just downloads glib, gtk, their dependencies and a few other needed libraries and extracts them into c:\MinGW.
  
• Ready! Now we put our focus on GIMP itself (without Python - if you want, you can install Python like we installed PERL and then don't use --disable-python):
  
  [t]cd /c/gimp/gimp-2.3.10
  ./configure --disable-print --disable-python
  make
  make install[/t]
  
  If there are no errors, you have a working Gimp 2.3.10 at this position:
  C:\Msys\1.0\local\bin\gimp-2.3.exe
  
  If there is an error with xmlparse.dll or xmltok.dll, download expat.zip and copy the DLLs to c:\mingw\bin.
  An other common error is that you have old glib libraries (from previous GIMP installations) on your computer (Windows system folder). This can lead to error messages regrading gobject-2.0-0.dll when starting the GIMP executable. In this case, remove old Gtk version from System control panel/software and/or replace all older gobject-dlls by the version in your new GIMP directory (C:\Msys\1.0\local\bin)
  
  I hope that I didn't let something out. It is possible that you have to change the procedure a bit, e.g. that you have to download and extract an extra file somewhere (you will notice if something is missing ). For general, I would recommend to play around with every tutorial step until it basically works. If you ignore an error and skip the step, there is a high possiblity that the other steps won't work, too (you can try, of course).

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Perfectly detailed, most importantly at the end, author aslo tells about common mistakes and way to prevent common errors.

Thanks for great effort, I am sure it will benifit all.. :h:

regards

Thanks for the tutorial ive now been able to compile the Gimp for the 1st time at least I can now check the scripts ive written are still going to run on 2.4 when it is released

kward1979uk: Thanks! I'm happy that the tutorial was helpful. However, you could also have used the pre-compiled development version of GIMP
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=424766

Thanks for providing the tutorial! This is a new area for me, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Have you tried compiling GAP? Will these steps work also? Sorry if that's a dumb question. As I said, this is new to me!

: Wow...Thank you !! :h:

Redforce i saw on your site something similar but about compiling Gimp on Ubuntu Linux ...any plan to translate it?

fencepost: I haven't tried to compile the GAP yet. However, I think there are no big differences. You can try to compile GIMP first and then do steps 5 and 7 again but for GAP 2.2 instead of GIMP 2.3. Sourcecode is available at ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/plug-ins/v2.2/gap

fotocomics: Yes, I wrote a tutorial for compiling the newest CVS GIMP on Ubuntu 6.06, too. Would you be interested in a translation?

YES !! :h:

Well have a look at:
http://www.gimptalk.com/forum/topic/Compiling-Gimp-From-Cvs-head-With-Ubuntu-6-06-8731-1.html

How do you compile plugins using windows?

never mind ive found the answers i required

Well, I got as far as running the gimp-dep script. It didn't like the firewall, so I went out and manually downloaded all the packages. However, the very last package mentioned in the script is xmltok.dll....I could not find where to download it. It isn't listed in the directory of ftp://ftp.jclark.com/pub/xml.

ftp://ftp.jclark.com/pub/xml/

If im reading it correctly it is in the expat zip file which is unzipped in a temp folder then the required dll is copied into Mingw/bin

You're right, I looked at the zip, it is in there. So is that where they all get unpacked to? I was going to unzip them manually, since I couldn't run the script. I have debated hacking the script (I would have no idea what I am doing) and just taking out all the ftp commands and leaving the extraction commands, and then executing the script in the same folder where I downloaded all the packages.

You can download all the packages and put them into c:\temp
Then the script doesn't try to download them again and should extract them correctly

You can also set the FTP_PASSIVE variable before executing the script:
FTP_PASSIVE=1 sh gimp-dep.sh

Then wget will use the passive mode (allowing to go through your firewall)

Well, I got through the compile (man, that was LONG, almost 4 hours.). How the heck do you run it? I have tried typing ./gimp-2.3.exe in the msys window. Nothing happens. I have tried clicking on it from Windows Explorer...nothing happens. Gimptool runs within the msys window, so something got compiled.

There were a couple of errors during the configure process on a couple of the filters, but since it was on ones I rarely use, I wasn't too concerned about it. "make" and "make install" ran just fine.

dude, i have successfully compiled Gimp 2.3.

supposed i would like to copy Gimp 2.3 to another pc, which of the folders and files on the C:\MSYS directory should i copy so it would run without problems???

Bump

To find it i had to use google advanced search...for some reason was not possible find it in any other way :a:

Source code for 2.3.11 is now available

Thanks for this tutorial, I was struggling with the outdated Wiki version trying to build 2.3.10. Now this build seems to be progressing nicely. One major gripe I have with this setup is the requirement for everything to be in C:\MinGW, C:\gimp, etc. I don't use my C: drive for ANYTHING other than the OS, so this is annoying. Of course I tried a couple of times to install elsewhere on my D: partition, and checked the script for any hardcoded C:\ dependencies, but it would never work until I did everything from the default folders. Oh well, I can delete everything once the build finishes.


Any tips on the new dependancies for 2.3.11? From the Release Notes, it appears .11 has new gtk/glib/etc requirements, but the gtk repos I've seen appear to be incomplete compared to the prior version. Can we assume that anything (pango, cairo, etc.) that isn't in the latest gtk/glib folders can be used from the prior version (i.e. from this build)?

Well in my opinion this tutorial has to be clipped!
So i did!

Well, it figures: I finally get 2.3.10 compiled, and gimp-win finally releases the Win32 build of 2.3.11.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=121075

I'd still like to know how to compile 2.3.11 myself, and also how to package/distribute it outside of MSYS.

Not in the same way as 2.3.10 ? ...and what is " MSYS."? :s:

I'm not kidding i would like to know

2.3.11 uses a newer version of GTK, GLib, etc according to the release notes. From what I can see, Win32 binaries of all of these aren't available yet, which means compiling THOSE as well. That's why I'm glad to see pre-built Win32 binaries of 2.3.11.

MSYS is the shell environment used to build Gimp. It's simulates a *nix-like environment on Windows, similar to Cygwin but much lighter weight. When you build Gimp according to the above instructions, your Gimp files are scattered across /local/bin, /local/etc, /local/lib, etc. like they would be on *nix. And the DLL's are named differently, like *.dll.a or whatever. Are these normal DLL's, just renamed? That sort of thing. I just want to know how to package all of these Gimp binaries and dependencies up and deploy them on Windows in the usual Windows fashion, like gimp-win does. That way I wouldn't be reliant on gimp-win to get around to building the latest Win32 binaries and installers -- I could do it once myself, then deploy it to all the Win32 machines like a normal Win32 application.

WHERE you saw it??...i see only the source code!

For the other question i suppose we shall just try...or contact Redforce on his german gimp side...or hoping that he or somebody more experienced of us will notice this thread and reply