xz/windows/INSTALL-MSVC.txt

Building XZ Utils with Microsoft Visual Studio
==============================================

Introduction
------------

    liblzma got MSVC support in XZ Utils 5.2.0, and the xz, xzdec,
    lzmadec, and lzmainfo command line tools in XZ Utils 5.6.0.

        NOTE: The *.exe files are linked against GNU getopt_long from
        the "lib" directory. That code is under the GNU LGPLv2.1
        and thus the matching source code must be provided when
        distributing the *.exe files. The simplest way to comply with
        the license requirements is to distribute the matching XZ Utils
        source package alongside the *.exe files.

    MSVC 2013 update 2 and later have enough C99 support to build
    liblzma from XZ Utils 5.2.0 and later without modifications.

    Visual Studio 2015 or later is required to build the command line
    tools.


Building
--------

    Use CMake to generate build files for MSVC. Visual Studio project
    files are no longer provided (XZ Utils 5.4.x were the last versions
    to include the project files).

    NOTE: GCC and Clang compatible inline assembly isn't supported by
    the MSVC compiler. Using clang-cl under MSVC should make inline
    assembly work (untested).


Notes
-----

    liblzma API headers declare the functions with __declspec(dllimport)
    by default. To avoid this when using static liblzma from your code,
    #define LZMA_API_STATIC before #including <lzma.h>.

    MSVC gives a bunch of compiler warnings. Some warnings are specific
    to 32-bit or 64-bit build and some appear for both builds. These
    are known and shouldn't be a problem. Some of them will probably
    be fixed in the future.