Building Stingray 12.1 for Windows XP

[Rick Gutleber]

I have gotten a request to create a Windows XP build of the application we are developing which we've just updated to Stingray 12.

We have recently migrated our development environment from Visual Studio 2003, a version of Stringray that was approximately 15 years to Visual Studio 2015 and Stringray 12. There was a lot involved, but possibly the easiest part of the process was upgrading Stingray. Despite using an _ancient_ version of the library, Stingray 12 _just worked_. That was a very pleasant surprise.

Anyhow, it is likely that we have customers that are still running Windows XP and 2003. Yes, these are no longer supported, blah, blah, blah, but if we can deliver for those operating systems, we should.

According to the documentation, Stingray supports Windows XP, "as Visual Studio target platform only", and I'm not quite sure that means. I definitely get that RogueWave does not support using operating systems that are past their end-of-life, but is it possible to build Stingray for XP, and if so, what changes need to be made?

[Rick Gutleber]

So I found the answer to my problem, here:

http://docs.roguewave.com/stingray/c...tml%23ww742072

But I'm having a new problem, when I try to rebuild Stingray, I'm getting the following error:

6>  Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 14.00.24210.0
6>  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
6>
6>  Building with 32 bit compiler settings.
4>
4>  Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 14.00.24210.0
4>  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
4>
4>  Building with 32 bit compiler settings.
6>NMAKE : fatal error U1081: '.\bldclean.BAT' : program not found
6>  Stop.
6>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.MakeFile.Targets(41,5): error MSB3073: The command "NMAKE /f Views14.mak all /i" exited with code 2.
4>NMAKE : fatal error U1081: '.\bldclean.BAT' : program not found
4>  Stop.
4>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.MakeFile.Targets(41,5): error MSB3073: The command "NMAKE /f Edit14.mak all" exited with code 2.

I've been messing around with this all afternoon. I've actually uninstalled and reinstalled Stingray, and I've looked at my path variable, and tried a few changes (with no improvement).

When I first installed Stingray, I was able to build it with no problems, so I can't figure out what could have changed.

[CodeMonkey]

I've seen this problem if the environment was not initialized properly. Look for vc.bat in the Stingray directories. Run the batch file with the correct command line parameters. Or just run vc.bat from the command line to view it's "usage". Let us know how that works for you...

[Rick Gutleber]

So for completely independent reasons I had to have my machine reimaged by IT. After getting set back up, I wasn't seeing the error above, but I'm getting lots of other errors trying to build 12.1.

I've made the numerous changes needed to build for XP-compatibility, which means running the "Assistant", selecting the "XP SP3" target, running all the wizards, and selecting the Enable _USING_V110_SDK71_Flag for every library. I also replaced all "<PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset>" with "<PlatformToolset> v140_xp</PlatformToolset>" in all the .vcxproj files, which makes me wonder what the "Assistant" is doing when I select the "XP SP3" target (I suspect it's doing nothing). Why are there so many manual steps required? Why can't I just pick everything I need in the Assistant and then just build? Why do I need to run all those "wizards" and still have to manually fix the project files?

I'm seeing numerous errors, including the following:

.\objs\vc14\x86\oc1210asud\oc1210asud.dll.manifest : general error c1010070: Failed to load and parse the manifest. The system cannot find the file specified.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Ma keFile.Targets(41,5): error MSB3073: The command "NMAKE /f Chart14.mak all /i" exited with code -1.

----

LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'RWUXThemeS14.lib'
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\link.exe"' : return code '0x450'
Stop.
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\nmake.exe"' : return code '0x2'
Stop.
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V140\Microsoft.Ma keFile.Targets(41,5): error MSB3073: The command "NMAKE /f Grid14.mak all" exited with code 2.

----

All in all VS2015 reports 63 errors when I build everything. I don't even know where to start...

Let's be honest, your build process is disorganized and confusing. The documentation says there are "problems" identified with building under Vista and Windows 7 and refers to the Release Notes (with no link?!), but in the Release Notes I couldn't find anything, which is frustrating because it may very well be referring to the problem I'm having.

I really don't understand the purpose of the "Assistant" because it doesn't seem to actually remove the need to do any of the manual steps. vc.bat is nicer to use, but I still get the same link errors when I try nmake.

What's more frustrating is that whenever you try to build the libraries, it always starts with a "clean" which means it's essentially impossible to be sure you've built everything if you have any problems at all.

I suspect some of the problems are caused by permission problems from having to make changes under "Program Files" which is a very non-Windows way to do things, but I haven't gotten around to uninstalling, reinstalling in a different place and going through the arduous configuration and build process to test my theory.

Also, the e-mail support guy (Boris) told me you're not supposed to install multiple versions of Stingray on the same machine, which means upgrading everyone here, including the build machine, is going to be unnecessarily complicated and difficult.

I would really appreciate some advice in trying to troubleshoot these problems.

Thanks

[jlo]

Rick,

I understand our support team has assisted you in resolving these issues. We are aware that documentation should be improved to avoid confusion like this, updates are planned in the next Stingray release.

regards,
Stingray Product Manager