Setting up a Windows Development Environment

This builds the library based on the Visual C++ compiler, but can be adjusted to work without if needed.

Background

JNA uses the Microsoft Visual Studio C++ compiler (MSVC) to compile native bits when MSVC is detected in the environment. The MSVC compiler provides structured event handling (SEH), which allows JNA to trap native faults when run in protected mode. It does this using libffi's native/libffi/msvcc.sh wrapper script, which converts Makefile gcc commands to MSVC-compatible (e.g. cl.exe, etc) calls.

For x86, x86_64, you will still need to install mingw64 in order to compile a small bit of inline assembly.

To use the MSVC compiler, the appropriate x86 or x86_64 versions of cl.exe/ml(64).exe/link.exe must be in your PATH and that the INCLUDE and LIB environment variables are set properly.

We'll set these automatically using VsDevCmd.bat

Prefer to use bash instead?

export MSVC="/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0/vc"
export WSDK="/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft SDKs/Windows/v7.0A"
export WSDK_64="/c/Program Files/Microsoft SDKs/Windows/v7.1"

export INCLUDE="$(cygpath -m "$MSVC")/include;$(cygpath -m "$WSDK")/include"
# for x86_64 target
export LIB="$(cygpath -m "$MSVC")/lib/amd64;$(cygpath -m "$WSDK_64")/lib/x64"
# for x86 target
export LIB="$(cygpath -m "$MSVC")/lib;$(cygpath -m "$WSDK")/lib"

Warning: The below steps are for cmd only. If you're choosing to use bash, you'll need to adjust each command as needed.

Prerequisites

Starting pont: A clean Windows 10 64-bit Installation with all patches

Install "Visual Studio Community 2019" or the "Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019" (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/)
- Windows 10 SDK
- MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++-x64/x86-Buildtools
- MSVC v142 - VS 2019 C++-ARM64-Buildtools
- Windows Universal CRT SDK
Install AdoptOpenJDK 8 for the target architecture (https://adoptopenjdk.net/index.html)
Install ant (https://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi).
Install Cygwin 64 Bit (https://cygwin.com/install.html)
- make
- automake
- automake1.15
- libtool
- git
- gcc-g++ (See table)
  
  x86_64 x86 aarch64
  
  gcc-g++
  mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++
  mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core gcc-g++
  mingw64-i686-gcc-g++
  mingw64-i686-gcc-core gcc-g++

Steps

Note: The paths below are samples and depend on the exact versions installed. For example for "Visual Studio Community 2019" vcvarsall.bat can be found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat, while for "Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019" the file is found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat.

Open cmd for the following actions

Point JAVA_HOME to the root of the target JDK:

JAVA_HOME `x86_64`

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\AdoptOpenJDK\jdk-8.0.222.10-hotspot

JAVA_HOME `x86`

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files (x86)\AdoptOpenJDK\jdk-8.0.222.10-hotspot

JAVA_HOME `aarch64`

Native builds only. For cross-compiling, use x86_64.

set JAVA_HOME=%USERPROFILE%\jdk-16-ea+19-windows-aarch64

Ensure ant is accessible from the PATH

set PATH=%USERPROFILE%\apache-ant-1.9.11\bin;%PATH%

Include 64 Bit Cygwin in the path
```
set PATH=C:\cygwin64\bin\;%PATH%
```

Setup the Visual Studio build environment using vcvarsall in <host>_<target> notation:

VsDevCmd `x86_64`

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64

VsDevCmd `x86`

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64_x86

VsDevCmd `aarch64`

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64_arm64

Run the build
```
ant
```
... or if cross-compiling, specify the target architecture and only build the native library, e.g:
```
ant -Dos.prefix=win32-aarch64 native
```

Mingw Only

To build without Visual C++, using only Cygwin, just skip step 5 and skip installing the Visual C++ Build Tools 2019 . (Cygwin currently cannot build aarch64 binaries, MSVC is needed)

Troubleshooting

For native compiling or linking errors for MSVC builds after VsDevCmd.bat was run for a different/wrong architecture:
- Close and reopen cmd
- Configure PATH, JAVA_HOME again per target architecture.
- Run ant clean
- Start the build again.
For native compiling or linking errors for MSVC builds, toggle on debug mode in native/libffi/msvcc.sh:
```
- verbose=
+ verbose=1
```
Re-run ant with detailed output:
```
ant -DEXTRA_MAKE_OPTS="--debug=v"
```

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