C/C++ Newbie trying to get CEGUI/MINGW64/WIN7 to work

[Jetray]

Followed instructions (sort of) on this page: http://cegui.org.uk/wiki/How_to_install ... With_MinGW
up to "you can see the Makefile at the target binary directory you choose. Build it."
At this point dependencies folder and sub folders bin, include, lib were still empty. And didn't know how to build it.

So I typed make -f Makefile in MinGW, it gave me some message which I didn't understand because I didn't really know how to use make. And the make process didn't seem to have exited. At this point the dependencies folders were still empty.



Looked around for MinGW related topics, but either not the same setup or the subjects talked about were too advanced.
All help appreciated. BTW, English is not my first language, apologies if anything sounds weird.

[Ident]

What do you mean by "sort of" following the instructions?

[manhnt]

Followed instructions (sort of) on this page: http://cegui.org.uk/wiki/How_to_install ... With_MinGW
up to "you can see the Makefile at the target binary directory you choose. Build it."
At this point dependencies folder and sub folders bin, include, lib were still empty. And didn't know how to build it.

So I typed make -f Makefile in MinGW, it gave me some message which I didn't understand because I didn't really know how to use make. And the make process didn't seem to have exited. At this point the dependencies folders were still empty.



Looked around for MinGW related topics, but either not the same setup or the subjects talked about were too advanced.
All help appreciated. BTW, English is not my first language, apologies if anything sounds weird.

I recommend you to use msys2 instead of mingw because it's more updated and have good support.
I can compile CEGUI easily with msys2 and didn't need to follow the wiki link.
You can install all of CEGUI's compiled dependencies with msys2.

[Jetray]

What do you mean by "sort of" following the instructions?

By that I mean all of the lines it told me to fix were already fixed when I looked in those files.
And the CMake option CEGUI_GNUtoMS is not seen but found CMAKE_GNUtoMS instead.
So I assumed they were the same thing and unchecked that option before I pressed generate in CMake.

[Jetray]

I recommend you to use msys2 instead of mingw because it's more updated and have good support.
I can compile CEGUI easily with msys2 and didn't need to follow the wiki link.
You can install all of CEGUI's compiled dependencies with msys2.

Because I am new to C/C++ I don't quite know how to get msys2 to work.
In fact, I am currently running the mingw64.exe from inside the msys2 folder because the g++ function is not recognized when I run in msys2.exe but works in mingw64.exe
Hence, I have always run only mingw64.exe and get things to work by copying .exe .dll .h .a files into the bin, include, lib folders under mingw64 folder.

It's a little off topic but would be great help if you can teach me how to properly work with msys2 and properly install CEGUI.

[manhnt]

You need to open mingw64 or mingw32 shell instead of msys2 shell to access tools like g++.
But first, you'll have to install them in any shells, you can search using command pacman -Ss.
For example: pacman -Ss gcc.
Packages are named with different prefixes so be aware of what you are installing.
(Only install mingw64 packages if you want to use in mingw64 shell)
So, basically you search and install CEGUI dependencies for msys2, then you compile CEGUI using cmake and mingw64 shell.
You don't need any dependencies from CEGUI's website, only grab the CEGUI source and extract it.
Install expat, freeimage, ... all the dependencies you want.
(pacman -Ss package_name to search, pacman -S package_name to install)
Then cd cegui, mkdir build, cd build, cmake .. and make.