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
VS is needed for building debug versions even while doing command line build. It might even be needed for building release versions if the projects arent setup quite right for msbuild+sdk only. Presence of VS doesnt mean that we are going to use GUI
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!