This file contains notes, hints and information of interest for those developers wishing to compile PasswordSafe for Windows. Linux developers should read the file README.LINUX.DEVELOPERS.txt.
There are several 'degrees of freedom' for Windows developers:
Note regarding Visual Express: The MFC version of PasswordSafe cannot be built using Visual Express, as Microsoft does not provide MFC support in this product. It should, however, be possible to build the wxWidgets version.
To summarise: The 'official' version of PasswordSafe on Windows platforms is based on MFC (Microsoft's Foundation Classes), and uses Microsoft's XML parser. This corresponds to the ReleaseM configuration in the build environment, i.e., the release build using Microsoft's XML parser. This will build the required DLLs using their Release configuration (pws_at.dll for AutoType support and pws_osk.dll for the Virtual Keyboard) and the base resource DLL (pwsafe_base.dll used to create non-English language support).
The Visual Studio 2010 projects have been updated to be able to generate the 64-bit versions of both the MFC and wxWidgets. This has only been tested on a 64-bit Windows environment with the VC10 64-bit compiler. It has not been tested on a 32-bit Windows environment with a cross-compiler. For wxWidgets, you will need the 64-bit static libraries and they should be placed in a new diretory 'lib64\vc10_lib' corresponding to the current 'lib\vc10_lib' for the 32-bit versions.
For each Configuration there is an associated platform. Unfortunately, Visual Studio adds all defined platforms to all defined configurations even if a particular combination is not valid. The supported combinations are:
The current MFC configurations are:
The current wxWidgets configurations are:
Note that the core and os project files contain all of the above projects, even if you are only selecting one of the MFC or the wxWidget builds. You should not have to select them individually as selecting the main PasswordSafe configuration will select the correct configuration for these projects. You should also be careful not to select all configrations in the VS2010 Batch Build process either to build, rebuild or clean all configurations. Only select MFC configurations if using the MFC PasswordSafe solution (pwsafe.sln) and the wxWdigets configurations if using the wxWidgets PasswordSafe solution (pwsafe_wx.sln).
The source code for PasswordSafe may be downloaded as a zip file, or retrieved from the Subversion repository at https://passwordsafe.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/passwordsafe/trunk/pwsafe/pwsafe using a subversion client. Currently (August 2010), the Windows version is built using Microsoft's development tools as described below.
If you're going to commit code to the repository, please set your subversion client's configuration file as follows:
In the "[miscellany]" section, ensure the following variable is set to 'yes':
enable-auto-props = yes
In the "[auto-props]" section, add the following if not already there:
*.c = svn:eol-style=native *.cmd = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/plain *.cpp = svn:eol-style=native *.cs = svn:eol-style=native *.csproj = svn:eol-style=native *.dsp = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.dsw = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.h = svn:eol-style=native *.hhc = svn:eol-style=native *.hhk = svn:eol-style=native *.hpp = svn:eol-style=native *.html = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/html *.ico = svn:mime-type=image/x-icon *.in = svn:eol-style=native *.inc = svn:eol-style=native *.ini = svn:eol-style=native *.iss = svn:eol-style=native *.jpg = svn:mime-type=image/jpeg *.js = svn:eol-style=native *.linux = svn:eol-style=native *.manifest = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.nsi = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.pjd = svn:eol-style=native *.pl = svn:eol-style=native *.png = svn:mime-type=image/png *.po = svn:eol-style=native *.rc = svn:eol-style=native *.rc2 = svn:eol-style=native *.resx = svn:eol-style=native *.sh = svn:eol-style=native;svn:executable *.sln = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.txt = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/plain *.vbs = svn:eol-style=native *.vcproj = svn:eol-style=CRLF *.windows = svn:eol-style=native *.wxs = svn:eol-style=native *.xml = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/xml *.xpm = svn:mime-type=image/x-xpm *.xsd = svn:eol-style=native *.xsl = svn:eol-style=native LICENSE = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/plain Makefile = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/plain README = svn:eol-style=native;svn:mime-type=text/plain
(This file is ~/.subversion/config for Linux, and under Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Subversion\config on Windows. If using Tortoise SVN client under Windows, this can be accessed by right clicking a file, selecting Tortoise SVN and then select Settings from the menu and using the Edit button in the General Settings panel).
The Windows version of PasswordSafe can be built using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (C++ compiler for PaswordSafe ('VC10') and C# compiler if you wish to re-generate the Virtual Keyboard data, which is not normally necessary). Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (MSVS8) and 2008 are also supported, as described below. The VC10 Express compiler does not support Microsoft's Foundation Classes, which are used extensively within the current official Windows version.
The main (toplevel) Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 solution file is pwsafe.sln. The MSVS8 version is pwsafe8.sln. Likewise, the other solution files in this project have "8" appended to the MSVS8 versions.
In order to build the Windows version of PasswordSafe, you need to install the following freely available components, in addition to Visual Studio:
SDK NOTE: In order to compile PasswordSafe using MFC, the Microsoft Windows SDK's 'include' and 'lib' directories must be added to the directories supplied by Visual Studio 2005. This is achieved in VS2005 via Tools > Options > Project and Solutions > VC++ directories > Include files and Library files. They can be added at the end of each appropriate set using the directory you specified during installation (the defaults are: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\NNN\Include" and "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\NNN\Lib", where NNN is 6.0, 6.0A, 6.1 or 7.0 as noted above). The Microsoft Visual Studio Registration Tool only adds the .Net libraries and not those needed for PasswordSafe. It is recommended that you get SDK V6.1 and you place them above the libraries supplied with Visual Studio e.g. "$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\include" and "$(VCInstallDir)PlatformSDK\lib" otherwise you may get warning messages compiling source members using BlockInput.
Compiling using Visual Studio: If you're using Microsoft's Visual Studio, the file "UserVariables.props" (for VS10) or "UserVariables.vsprops" (for VS8) must exist and describe the directories where the non-"Windows SDK" components have been installed. The solution will not open correctly without this file being present. For your convenience, we've included a simple Visual Basic script, "configure.vbs" (or "configure8.vbs" for VS8) in the src/ui/Windows directory, that you can run to generate the above file with the correct values. These script will also prompt for the location of the 64-bit Xerces libraries for 64-bit builds.
Originally, PasswordSafe used Microsoft's XML library for XML parsing and validation. For portability, we're now support the Xerces XML libraries, which are available for non-Windows platforms. We recommend the latest version (currently 3.1.1 as of April 2010), as they supply pre-built Windows binaries using the VS2005 (VC8) and VS2008 (VC9) and VS2010 (VC10) compilers. Note: for 64-bit Xerces builds, you must use the 64-bit versions of the Xerces libraries.
To determine which XML library to use while building PasswordSafe, we've defined a pre-processor variable (USE_XML_LIBRARY). If NOT defined, the compiled PasswordSafe will not process XML files (databases or filter definitions in XML format). Filters within a database will be treated as 'Unknown Fields' and will remain unchanged so that other versions of PasswordSafe that do support XML parsing can still use them. Note, however, that the application will be able to write XML files.
The two valid values of the USE_XML_LIBRARY variable are "MSXML" and "XERCES" corresponding to the three different implementations. For wxWidgets builds, only XERCES will be possible but they are still under development (as of August 2010).
PasswordSafe uses SAX2 processing for both Microsoft's and the Xerces' XML Parsers, which are full validating parsers and require the presence of the appropriate XSD Schema file (included in the distribution and in the "xml" sub-directory, to process either file or filter imports. This ensures that the data eventually hitting the SAX2 content handlers is correct and just needs placing in the appropriate fields.
In order to help debug user problems when Windows just says "there has been an error", a "Windows Unhandled Fault Handler" has been added. This will create a minidump, which can then be used to find where the error took place and, hopefully, why.
An extra "extended" Command Line flag of "--testdump" has been introduced for two reasons. Firstly, it allows the developer to test the minidump process, which is only available in the Release version of the executable and, secondly, allows the translators to check that the error screen displays as they wish.
Note to Translators: the error screen is a basic Windows function and has a fixed width. This is the reason why the minidump file name and directory have been split onto separate lines.
Note: Extended flags start with two minus signs ('--') and must be specified in full - i.e. no abbreviations. They are not displayed in the Usage notes for the normal users and no error message or display is shown if they are not recognised.
With this flag set, an extra button will appear in the bottom right hand corner of the "About PasswordSafe" dialog. Click it, and a minidump should be produced.
In order to process the minidump, either the free Microsoft Windbg program can be used (see Microsoft's site for details), or Visual Studio (VS) can be used. In the latter case (and probably the former too!):
*** End of Developer Notes ***