Compiling FileZilla 3 under Windows

This documentation explains how to setup a build environment for FileZilla 3 and how to compile it under Windows using msys2. Msys2 is a cygwin environment. These instructions require you to run a 64bit Windows.

It will take some time to get everything working, but you will be able to use the build environment for other programs too.

For complete MSYS2 system and all needed dependencies installed, you will need 7GiB free space on your disk.

Note to wiki contributors: Do not change version numbers on your own. The build process is somewhat fragile and does break if you change things

Installing the MSYS2 environment

Download the 64bit MSYS2 installer and install it in a convenient location: msys2-x86_64-20230318.exe

Installing the compiler toolchain

FileZilla's shell extension needs to be build both for 32bit as well as 64bit, hence we're going to need compilers for both 32bit and 64bit.

Tools and compiler

First update

Start the MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit shell

pacman -Syu

close MSYS2 shell. Repeat until there are no more updates.

Install tools and compiler toolchain

Start MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit shell, execute the following command to install the necessary packages:

pacman -S autoconf automake libtool make mingw-w64-i686-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain git svn

Execute the following to work around some most-annoying bugs in the toolchain

## Fix missing platform prefix for windres
[ -f /mingw64/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-windres.exe ] || ln -s /mingw64/bin/windres.exe /mingw64/bin/x86_64-w64-mingw32-windres.exe
[ -f /mingw32/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-windres.exe  ] || ln -s /mingw32/bin/windres.exe /mingw32/bin/i686-w64-mingw32-windres.exe

Setting up the environment

Execute the following commands:

mkdir ~/prefix
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/prefix/bin:$HOME/prefix/lib:/mingw64/bin:/mingw32/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/prefix/lib/pkgconfig"' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/prefix/bin:$HOME/prefix/lib:/mingw64/bin:/mingw32/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/prefix/lib/pkgconfig"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export LC_ALL=C' >> ~/.bash_profile

Restart the MSYS2 MINGW64 shell.

Building dependencies

Building GMP

cd ~
curl -O https://gmplib.org/download/gmp/gmp-6.2.1.tar.xz
tar xf gmp-6.2.1.tar.xz
cd gmp-6.2.1
./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-fat
make && make install

Building Nettle

cd ~
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/nettle/nettle-3.7.3.tar.gz
tar xf nettle-3.7.3.tar.gz
cd nettle-3.7.3
./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-fat
make && make install

Building zlib

cd ~
wget https://zlib.net/fossils/zlib-1.2.13.tar.gz
tar xf zlib-1.2.13.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.13
LDSHAREDLIBC= ./configure --prefix="$HOME/prefix" -u=GNU
make && make install

Building GnuTLS

cd ~
wget ftp://ftp.gnutls.org/gcrypt/gnutls/v3.7/gnutls-3.7.2.tar.xz
tar xf gnutls-3.7.2.tar.xz
cd gnutls-3.7.2
./configure --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --with-included-libtasn1 --disable-doc --disable-guile --without-p11-kit --enable-local-libopts --disable-nls --with-included-unistring --disable-tests
make && make install

Building SQLite

cd ~
wget https://sqlite.org/2018/sqlite-autoconf-3250300.tar.gz
tar xf sqlite-autoconf-3250300.tar.gz
cd sqlite-autoconf-3250300
./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static
make && make install

Building wxWidgets

cd ~
git clone --branch WX_3_0_BRANCH --single-branch https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets.git wx3
cd wx3
./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-unicode --enable-printfposparam --without-libtiff --without-libjpeg --with-expat=builtin --with-libpng=builtin
make && make install

Building libfilezilla

cd ~
svn co https://svn.filezilla-project.org/svn/libfilezilla/trunk libfilezilla
cd libfilezilla
autoreconf -i
./configure --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static
make && make install

Building fzssh

Downlaod fzssh from <https://fzssh.filezilla-project.org/download.php>

cd ~
tar xf fzssh-1.2.0.tar.xz
cd fzssh-1.2.0
meson setup build
cd build
ninja install

Building Filezilla

Download FileZilla

cd ~
svn co https://svn.filezilla-project.org/svn/FileZilla3/trunk filezilla

Building FileZilla

cd ~/filezilla
autoreconf -i
./configure --with-pugixml=builtin
make

Stripping debug symbols

strip src/interface/.libs/filezilla.exe
strip src/putty/.libs/fzsftp.exe
strip src/putty/.libs/fzputtygen.exe
strip src/fzshellext/64/.libs/libfzshellext-0.dll
strip src/fzshellext/32/.libs/libfzshellext-0.dll
strip data/dlls/*.dll

Building the installer

Installing NSIS

Download and install NSIS 3 from <http://nsis.sourceforge.net/>

Compile the installer script

Right click data/install.nsi in Explorer and use “Compile NSIS Script” from context menu.

Troubleshooting

If you run into problems, please make sure you've followed each step exactly how it is explained and that you haven't missed any steps along the way.