Compilation of SPM5 on Windows XP

SPM MEX-files can be compiled using MinGW (tools that allow you to compile C code) and MSYS (a minimal shell system that allows you to use Makefile). The compiled MEX files come already shipped with the SPM5 package but you might need to recompile them to have them running faster (tuned for your exact platform) or because you developped your own routine relying on the core SPM5 functions.

Installation of MSYS

First, download the most recent MSYS package (MSYS-1.0.10.exe at time of writing) and install it in <install_dir>\msys\.

If you get an error saying error creating INI entry file c:\windows\MSYS.INI, you can safely ignore it. You can also answer n when asked for a post-installation.

Installation of MinGW

Second, download the most recent MinGW package (MinGW-4.1.10.exe at time of writing) and install it in <install_dir>\msys\mingw\ (this directory should already have be automatically created when installing MSYS). Choose to do a full installation with selecting:

current/runtime
w32api
binutils
gcc-core
ming32-make

You could have as well chosen to download these packages separately and uncompressing them in the same directory (the package names are mingw-runtime, w32api, binutils, gcc-core, mingw32-make).

Installation of GnuMEX

GnuMEX need also to be installed. Just specify that you want to compile using MinGW (MinGW linking).

Compilation

You can then launch MSYS by double-clicking on <install_dir>\msys\msys.bat. Move to your SPM5 directory with

% cd /c/spm/src

and then type make to start the compilation process

% make

This will create several MEX files (*.dll or *.mexw32) that are copied to their right location in SPM using the command

% make install

You can then remove all the files that have been created during the compilation with

% make distclean