Building Cairo for Windows with MinGW (Problems linking libpng)

Question

I'm trying to build cairo on Windows using MinGW (and MSYS). I am following the instrucions on Compiling GTK+ 2.16.4 for Windows, except that I'm using the latest versions whenever possible, i.e:

zlib-1.2.3
libpng-1.2.42
pixman-0.17.4
cairo-1.8.8

This works pretty well up until when I try to build the actual cairo. The configuration succeeds, but during make cairo seems to have problems linking to my build of libpng. After a little while I get a long list of errors such as this:

.libs/cairo-png.o: In function `png_simple_error_callback':
/home/user/cairo-1.8.8/src/cairo-png.c:95: undefined reference to `png_get_error_ptr'
.libs/cairo-png.o: In function `png_simple_warning_callback':
/home/user/cairo-1.8.8/src/cairo-png.c:112: undefined reference to `png_get_error_ptr'

...

.libs/cairo-png.o: In function `stream_read_func':
/home/user/cairo-1.8.8/src/cairo-png.c:686: undefined reference to `png_error'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [libcairo.la] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/user/cairo-1.8.8/src'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/user/cairo-1.8.8/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/user/cairo-1.8.8'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I have tried using an older version of libpng (1.2.40, the version being distributed by The GTK+ Project), with the same result. When I run "pkg-config -cflags -libs libpng" I get "-IC:/MinGW/include/libpng12 -LC:/MinGW/lib -lpng12", which seems correct. I'm sure I'm making some stupid mistake, but I cannot tell what it is.

Well, it turns out that my build of libpng was broken. When I compared it to a build that I had done a while ago on a different machine I noticed that 'libpng12.dll.a' was much too small (<1kb). I couldn't figure out a way to make it work so I just copied the version from the other machine and it fixed my problems with cairo. This I not very satisfying, but since I already spent more time on this than I should have, I'll just move on right now. If anybody runs into the same problem, they can use the same approach and get a working version from GnuWin (sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32). — kloffy
Quick follow-up: The same thing happened with another library (libcroco), so I think something is wrong with my MinGW/MSYS. The builds complete without error message, but the *.dll.a files end up smaller than they should be and whenever another program tries to use those libraries it fails during linking. I don't know what is wrong, I've used MinGW before and never had that problem. It could have something to do with me using Windows 7 (as opposed to Windows XP, which I used previously), but I haven't found anything online saying this could lead to problems... — kloffy

kloffy kloffy · Accepted Answer · 2010-02-12T21:44:15

Apparently this is a known issue. I don't know how managed to miss it, given that it is even mentioned in the blog that I was following (I think it's safe to assume that this also applies to Windows 7, given that I tried the third suggestion and it fixed my problem):

Now, let's install MinGW. Note that MinGW doesn't run smoothly on Windows Vista because of weird filesystem restrictions. The workaround is
to install MinGW on FAT filesystem,

to work in the safe mode, or

to use MinGW Portable which is said to be working well.

Building Cairo for Windows with MinGW (Problems linking libpng)

2 Answers