Libiconv Lite : Overview

Llibiconv is Microsoft Windows port of GNU libiconv project providing only the library part of libiconv project.

Headers and make files are manually modified from original template files, meaning that there is no need for additional configuration steps.

Source files are kept intact ensuring that llibiconv will behave exactly the same as libiconv.

Building Llibiconv

The build process supports only command line tools.

Llibiconv release comes with the libiconv-1.dll binary, libraries and header files. In case you wish to create your own binary build, download or clone Llibiconv sources and follow a few standard rules.

Prerequisites

To compile Llibiconv from source code you will need either Microsoft C/C++ Compiler from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 or any later version.

The official distributions are build using Custom Microsoft Compiler Toolkit compiler bundle.

Build using CMSC

Presuming that you have downloaded and unzipped CMSC release in the root of C drive.

Open command prompt in the directory where you have downloaded or cloned Llibiconv and do the following

> C:\cmsc-15.0_39\setenv.bat
Using default architecture: x64
Setting build environment for win-x64/0x0601

> nmake

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 9.00.30729.207
...

In case there are no compile errors, binaries are located inside x64-rel-dll subdirectory.

Build using Visual Studio

To build the Llibiconv using an already installed Visual Studio, you will need to open the Visual Studio native x64 command line tool. The rest is almost the same as with CMSC toolkit.

Here is the example for Visual Studio 2012

Inside the Start menu select Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 then click on Visual Studio Tools and click on Open VC2012 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt.

If using Visual Studio 2017 or later, open command prompt and call vcvars64.bat from Visual Studio install location eg, C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2017\VC\Auxiliary\Build

After setting the compiler, use the following

> cd C:\Some\Location\llibiconv
> nmake

The binary should be inside x64-rel-dll subdirectory.

Using Visual Studio, Llibiconv can be built as statically linked to the MSVCRT library.

Add _STATIC_MSVCRT=1 as nmake parameter:

> nmake _STATIC_MSVCRT=1

Static library builds

By default Makefile builds Llibiconv Library as dll. To build static version of the library add _STATIC=1 as nmake parameter

> nmake _STATIC=1

This will build iconvstatic.lib. The binary should be inside x64-rel-lib subdirectory.

Makefile targets

Makefile has two additional targets which can be useful for Llibiconv development and maintenance

> nmake clean

This will remove all produced binaries and object files by deleting x64 subdirectory.

> nmake install PREFIX=C:\some\directory

Standard makefile install target that will copy the executables, libraries and include files to the PREFIX location.

This can be useful if you are building Llibiconv with some Continuous build application that needs produced binaries at a specific location for later use.

License

The code in this repository is licensed under the GNU LGPL 2.1 License according to the upstream project.