Compiling FreeTDS under Windows

Requirements

• MSVC 6.0 (Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0) with Service Packs installed.
• February 2003 Platform SDK (must be February 2003, last supported platform SDK for VC6)
• FreeTDS (tested with version 0.82 + post 0.82 patches - updated 2009-03-02).
• PHP source files (tested with version 5.2.6)
• These packages (non-debug):
  • From http://pecl2.php.net/downloads/php-windows-builds/php-libs/ :
    • binary-tools.zip
  • From http://pecl2.php.net/downloads/php-windows-builds/php-libs/VC6/x86/ :
    • bindlib
    • libiconv
    • libxml
    • libxslt
    • zlib

Build Steps

• Create c:\dev
• Create c:\dev\php-build
• Uncompress all the packages listed in requirements and PHP into c:\dev\php-build (replacing all when uncompressing).
• Copy uncompressed freetds folder to C:\dev\php-build (rename it to, simply, "freetds").
• Apply post 0.82 patches in the "freetds" dir.
• Open the C:\dev\php-build\freetds\win32\msvc6\FreeTDS.dsw Project Workspace (it's really important to get this Workspace and not any of the individual projects!).
• In the "Build" menu, set the "Active Configuration" to "dblib - Win32 Release" and then, in the same menu, "Rebuild All". This should end with one dblib.lib library into C:\dev\php-build\freetd\win32\msvc6\db_Release
• Copy dblib.lib to C:\dev\php-build\lib
• Start CMD
• Create one C:\dev\prepare4php.bat file with contents below and execute it:

@set PATH=C:\dev\php-build\bin;%PATH%

@set INCLUDE=C:\dev\php-build\include;%INCLUDE%

@set LIB=C:\dev\php-build\lib;%LIB%

@set BISON_SIMPLE=C:\dev\php-build\bin\bison.simple

• Continue in CMD and change dir to C:\dev\php-build\php-x-x-x
• Execute this:
  • buildconf
  • cscript /nologo configure.js --disable-all --disable-ipv6 --enable-zts (--disable-zts) --with-dblib=shared --enable-object-out-dir=c:\dev --with-extra-includes=c:\dev\php-build\freetds\include;c:\dev\php-build\freetds\win32
  • nmake
• You should end with one C:\dev\Release_TS for the --enable-zts (or C:\dev\Release for the --disable-zts alternative) dir, with your compiled FreeTDS PHP module ready at the root level of that dir.

Notes

• By using --enable-zts or --disable-zts you'll end with different thread safe/no safe versions of the extension. Use them depending of your environment thread safety.
• If you one use PHP 5.2 version to build the lib, the extensions generated are expected to work against any PHP 5.2.x version (but not against other releases of PHP, like 5.1 or 5.3).
• MSVC 6.0 is required because it's the official tool used to build PHP binary distributions. It seems that, with PHP 5.3 they will start using MSVC 9 or so... corresponding extensions should use the same.
• Feel free to fix and improve this document. TIA!
• For any comment related to this, please use MDL-14725 in the Moodle Tracker.
• And MDL-11810 has a related discussion.