Building ICU 32/64 on Windows

Building ICU common and i18n projects for Boost

You do not need to build the whole of ICU just to get icudt.lib, icuuc.lib and icuin.lib required by boost regex for unicode aware regex. The "common" project makes icudt.lib icuuc.lib and the "i18n" project makes icuin.lib

The release configuration of ICU can be built with SDK only. Visual Studio is only needed to create debug versions. Visual Studio Express is sufficient and it can be run in command mode.

Specimen Build Platform/Environment

• windows server 2008 R2 SP1 64
• install sdk7.1 minimally
• install visual studio c++ 2010 express (if building debug versions)

Get ICU Source

Download

http://download.icu-project.org/files/icu4c/4.6.1/icu4c-4_6_1-src.zip

"extract all" to

f:\icu4c-4_6_1-src

Open sdk7.1 command prompt and get into icu *source* folder

>>>Windows SDK 7.1 Command Prompt
f:
cd \icu4c-4_6_1-src\icu\source

Building x64

x64/Release

setenv /release

cd common
msbuild /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release
cd ..

cd i18n
msbuild /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release
cd ..

Check the lib64 folder for icudt.lib, icuuc.lib and icuin.lib

x64/Debug

Producing the proper debug versions of icu may not be necessary if your objective is only to produce release versions of the boost libraries (and you use the work-around to avoid the need for icu debug libraries)

setenv /debug

NOTE: To produce the DEBUG version of the libraries, you need Visual Studio's bscmake on the path. This must be done after setenv.

vsvars32 x64

cd common
msbuild /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Debug
cd ..

cd i18n
msbuild /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Debug
cd ..

Check the lib64 folder for icuucd.lib and icuind.lib

Building Win32 (x86) Release and Debug

f:
cd \icu4c-4_6_1-src\icu\source

setenv /release /x86

cd common
msbuild /p:Platform=win32 /p:Configuration=Release
cd ..

cd i18n
msbuild /p:Platform=win32 /p:Configuration=Release
cd ..

@if not exist ..\lib\icudt.lib @echo ..\lib\icudt.lib not built!
@if not exist ..\lib\icuin.lib @echo ..\lib\icuin.lib not built!
@if not exist ..\lib\icuuc.lib @echo ..\lib\icuuc.lib not built!


setenv /debug /x86

vsvars32 x86

cd common
msbuild /p:Platform=win32 /p:Configuration=Debug
cd ..

cd i18n
msbuild /p:Platform=win32 /p:Configuration=Debug
cd ..


@if not exist ..\lib\icuind.lib @echo ..\lib\icuind.lib not built!
@if not exist ..\lib\icuucd.lib @echo ..\lib\icuucd.lib not built!