Add Windows (MSVC) support

[bchretien]

Some people are interested in using RobOptim on Windows, so this is worth investigating.

@kayusawa could you make a summary of your tests regarding the compilation of RobOptim on Windows? Thanks! :-)

[francois-keith]

👍
Some details on the installation of the dependencies would also be appreciated.

[bchretien]

Indeed, we could then make a detailed installation process on the website.

[kayusawa]

Dear Dr.Crétien

Thank you for the e-mail.
I could compile RobOpitim on Windows by using VisualStudio 2012 and Intel
Compiler few month ago.
For the compilation, I prepared several windows tools and libraries as
follows:

• CMake (2.8.12)
• pkg_config
• doxgen
• eigen (3.2.2)
• boost (1.55)
• log4cxx (0.10.0)
• libtool (1.5.26)

Among them, I compiled boost, log4cxx, and libtool myself.
I'm sorry that I don't really remember the details, but a few minor
modifications are required for the compilation of log4cxx and libtool.

After preparing the libraries, the file encoding of RobOptim codes has to
be changed from "utf8-without BOM" to "utf8-with BOM".
(It enables MSVC/Intel to read utf8 characters.)

If Intel Compiler is available, the project files generated by CMake will
work properly without modification.
However, if you plan to use VisualStudio, there may be a few conflicts
about MSVC definitions.
For example, "boost::mpl::size_t" and "unsigned int size_t" will be
ambiguous when calling Eigen sparse matrix.
Actually there are few errors in my case, so I modified Eigen codes
directly.

If you have any question, please contact me.

Best regards,
Ko Ayusawa

---

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-07 20:20 GMT+09:00 Benjamin Chrétien notifications@github.com:

Some people are interested in using RobOptim on Windows, so this is worth
investigating.

@kayusawa https://github.com/kayusawa could you make a summary of your
tests regarding the compilation of RobOptim on Windows? Thanks! :-)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#76.

[kayusawa]

Dear Dr. Chrétien

I'm so sorry that I misspelled your name.

If you want to need the pre-compiled binaries or modified codes of the
third-party libraries, I can prepare and send you.

Best regards,

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-08 19:35 GMT+09:00 Ko AYUSAWA k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp:

Dear Dr.Crétien

Thank you for the e-mail.
I could compile RobOpitim on Windows by using VisualStudio 2012 and Intel
Compiler few month ago.
For the compilation, I prepared several windows tools and libraries as
follows:

• CMake (2.8.12)
• pkg_config
• doxgen
• eigen (3.2.2)
• boost (1.55)
• log4cxx (0.10.0)
• libtool (1.5.26)

Among them, I compiled boost, log4cxx, and libtool myself.
I'm sorry that I don't really remember the details, but a few minor
modifications are required for the compilation of log4cxx and libtool.

After preparing the libraries, the file encoding of RobOptim codes has to
be changed from "utf8-without BOM" to "utf8-with BOM".
(It enables MSVC/Intel to read utf8 characters.)

If Intel Compiler is available, the project files generated by CMake will
work properly without modification.
However, if you plan to use VisualStudio, there may be a few conflicts
about MSVC definitions.
For example, "boost::mpl::size_t" and "unsigned int size_t" will be
ambiguous when calling Eigen sparse matrix.
Actually there are few errors in my case, so I modified Eigen codes
directly.

If you have any question, please contact me.

Best regards,
Ko Ayusawa

---

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-07 20:20 GMT+09:00 Benjamin Chrétien notifications@github.com:

Some people are interested in using RobOptim on Windows, so this is worth
investigating.

@kayusawa https://github.com/kayusawa could you make a summary of your
tests regarding the compilation of RobOptim on Windows? Thanks! :-)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#76.

[francois-keith]

@kayusawa Hi, I would be interested in testing roboptim on windows. Could
you please send me (or put on a server) those pre-compiled libraries?

Thanks.
Le 8 oct. 2014 12:43, "kayusawa" notifications@github.com a écrit :

Dear Dr. Chrétien

I'm so sorry that I misspelled your name.

If you want to need the pre-compiled binaries or modified codes of the
third-party libraries, I can prepare and send you.

Best regards,

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-08 19:35 GMT+09:00 Ko AYUSAWA k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp:

Dear Dr.Crétien

Thank you for the e-mail.
I could compile RobOpitim on Windows by using VisualStudio 2012 and
Intel
Compiler few month ago.
For the compilation, I prepared several windows tools and libraries as
follows:

• CMake (2.8.12)
• pkg_config
• doxgen
• eigen (3.2.2)
• boost (1.55)
• log4cxx (0.10.0)
• libtool (1.5.26)

Among them, I compiled boost, log4cxx, and libtool myself.
I'm sorry that I don't really remember the details, but a few minor
modifications are required for the compilation of log4cxx and libtool.

After preparing the libraries, the file encoding of RobOptim codes has
to
be changed from "utf8-without BOM" to "utf8-with BOM".
(It enables MSVC/Intel to read utf8 characters.)

If Intel Compiler is available, the project files generated by CMake
will
work properly without modification.
However, if you plan to use VisualStudio, there may be a few conflicts
about MSVC definitions.
For example, "boost::mpl::size_t" and "unsigned int size_t" will be
ambiguous when calling Eigen sparse matrix.
Actually there are few errors in my case, so I modified Eigen codes
directly.

If you have any question, please contact me.

Best regards,
Ko Ayusawa

---

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-07 20:20 GMT+09:00 Benjamin Chrétien notifications@github.com:

Some people are interested in using RobOptim on Windows, so this is
worth
investigating.

@kayusawa https://github.com/kayusawa could you make a summary of
your
tests regarding the compilation of RobOptim on Windows? Thanks! :-)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#76.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#76 (comment)
.

[bchretien]

Dear Ayusawa-san,

Thanks for the quick answer. Don't worry about my name, I know it's a difficult one :-)

For UTF-8 with BOM, this may be something that can be solved by CMake when generating the MSVC project files. If the compiler is the issue, a fix similar to this one may be what we need, especially if that means we do not need to add a BOM to all the files that contain UTF-8 characters.

For pre-compiled libraries, these could be released for our next major release. For the dependencies, I guess we could provide them (log4cxx/libtool), especially if some patching is involved.

For the Eigen error, is it something that happened in RobOptim or Eigen itself?

[kayusawa]

Dear Chrétien-san, Keith-san

For UTF-8 with BOM, this may be something that can be solved by CMake when

generating the MSVC project files. If the compiler is the issue, a fix similar
to this one
https://github.com/chewing/libchewing/blob/master/CMakeLists.txt#L42 may
be what we need, especially if that means we do not need to add a BOM to
all the files that contain UTF-8 characters.

Thank you for the advice.
I agree that we should solve it by the configuration of CMake.

For pre-compiled libraries, these could be released for our next major

release. For the dependencies, I guess we could provide them (log4cxx/
libtool), especially if some patching is involved.

I attached the pre-compiled log4cxx and libtool (both x86 and x64).
Please rename ".lib.dat" to ".lib" inside "install.zip"
(This is because the security problem of AIST mailing service.)
I'm sorry that the path setting of the package config file of log4cxx has
to be modified manually.

I also attached the modified code of them.
Almost all the modification of log4cxx is just the definition of namespace.
The original windows libtool does not call loadlibrary properly on VC2012,
so I tried to modify and create the windows solution file.
I also attach the simple memo of those installation.

For the Eigen error, is it something that happened in RobOptim or Eigen

itself?

I'm sorry that I almost forgot about where the problem occured.
But I guess "boost/mpl/size_t" and "unsigned int size_t" were ambiguous
when creating Eigen matrix array in Function of RobOptim .
When I used Intel Compiler, there are no such kind of problems.
I guess there is a way to solve it by using MSVC macro to control them.
But at that time, I had to compile RobOptim immediately, so I modified
"size_t" to "::size_t" in several places in Eigen codes and planed to
revert later.

If there are problems, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,
Ko ayusawa

---

Ko AYUSAWA, researcher
CNRS-AIST JRL(Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT,
Intelligent Systems Research Institute,
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology(AIST)
Tsukuba Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568 JAPAN
TEL: +81-29-861-3576 FAX: +81-29-862-6507

e-mail: k.ayusawa@aist.go.jp

2014-10-08 21:40 GMT+09:00 Benjamin Chrétien notifications@github.com:

Dear Ayusawa-san,

Thanks for the quick answer. Don't worry about my name, I know it's a
difficult one :-)

For UTF-8 with BOM, this may be something that can be solved by CMake when
generating the MSVC project files. If the compiler is the issue, a fix similar
to this one
https://github.com/chewing/libchewing/blob/master/CMakeLists.txt#L42
may be what we need, especially if that means we do not need to add a BOM
to all the files that contain UTF-8 characters.

For pre-compiled libraries, these could be released for our next major
release. For the dependencies, I guess we could provide them (log4cxx/
libtool), especially if some patching is involved.

For the Eigen error, is it something that happened in RobOptim or Eigen
itself?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#76 (comment)
.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

1. open VisualStudio comand prompt (x86)
2. change directory to boost top directory
3. type as follows:
   $ bootstrap
   $ b2 --build-dir=_build\x86 --stagedir=stage\x86 address-model=32 link=static,shared runtime-link=shared -j 4
4. if you have intel compiler...
   $ "c:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Composer XE\bin\compilervars.bat" ia32 vs2012
   $ b2 --toolset="intel" --build-dir=_build\x86 --stagedir=stage\x86 address-model=32 link=static,shared runtime-link=shared -j 4

1. open VisualStudio comand prompt (x64) 2. change directory to boost top directory 3. type as follows: $ bootstrap $ b2 --build-dir=_build\x64 --stagedir=stage\x64 address-model=64 link=static,shared runtime-link=shared -j 4 4. if you have intel compiler... $ "c:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Composer XE\bin\compilervars.bat" intel64 vs2012 $ b2 --toolset="intel" --build-dir=_build\x64 --stagedir=stage\x64 address-model=64 link=static,shared runtime-link=shared -j 4

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
<log4cxx(MSVC2012)>

1. download as follows:

   • apache-log4cxx-0.10.0.zip
   • apr-1.5.1-win32-src.zip
   • apr-iconv-1.2.1-win32-src-r2.zip
   • apr-util-1.5.3-win32-src.zip

   from
   http://logging.apache.org/log4cxx/
   http://ftp.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/pub/network/apache/apr/

2. extract them as follows:
   log4cxx\appatch-log4cxx-0.10.0
   log4cxx\apr
   log4cxx\apr-util
   log4cxx\apr-iconv

3. call as follows:

   • configure.bat
   • configure-aprutil.bat

4. open "log4cxx\apache-log4cxx-0.10.0\projects\log4cxx.dsw"

5. add "log4cxx\apr-iconv\apriconv.dsp" in the solution file.

6. replace files as follows:

   • loggingevent.h
   • loggingevent.cpp
   • propertiespatternconverter.cpp
   • xmllayout.cpp

7. build log4cxx

8. liblog4cxx.pc has to be modified manually.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

1. open libltdl.sln 2. build libltdl

[bchretien]

Note regarding CI support for Windows: I recently noticed that some open-source projects now use AppVeyor, which could very roughly be seen as Travis for Windows.

[phuicy]

In the latest stable there seems alot of issues with a windows build, that aren't dependencies.

[bchretien]

Windows support is not available yet, although we are slowly getting there (cc @aescande).

[phuicy]

We have worked out quite few issues, but are still working on a lot of templating issues, e.g.:

40>C:\git\roboptim-core\include\roboptim/core/problem.hxx(118): error C2491: 'roboptim::Problem<T>::function' : definition of dllimport function not allowed

Will keep you informed. Is there an old binary of an older commit?

[bchretien]

Thanks for looking into this. Alas I don't think anyone shared any binary yet.

[francois-keith]

Just putting my 2 cents here.

I have tried to compile roboptim-core on windows very recently (I must be 1-2 commits late wrt master). Here are the errors I found (as I remember them, so this is not as precise as I'd like it to be).

• The error you're describing definition of dllimport function not allowed is due to the fact that some methods / classes are now templated (but weren't in the last version tested). The error can be suppressed by removing this macro for those classes.
• Some errors will also pop up because of the macro ROBOPTIM_CORE_**_DEPRECATED, that must be placed *before the function declaration in windows.
• Some of the unit tests will not compile in VS2008 because of template issues (I cannot tell you which ones right here).
• The format of the output is not the same as in unix (e.g., infinity is not written inf, but #INF, and the E notation takes an extra 0: 1e03 versus 1e003), so some unit tests may fail.

Those are some leads.
I will push that on my fork (it is still a work in progress) tonight if you want to have a look.

[phuicy]

Awesome, this is exactly what we are seeing.
I think to solve the 1st issue the ROBOPTIM_DLLAPI has to moved to a pre-declaration of the class., as:

// function definition
void __declspec(dllimport) funcB() {}   // C2491

// function declaration
void __declspec(dllimport) funcB();   // OK

number 2:
We set

#define ROBOPTIM_CORE_**_DEPRECATED