How to compile SpeedCrunch for Windows using mingw32 under Linux

Installing mingw32

Download the binaries for Linux from the mingw-w64 project (File -> Toolchains targetting Win32 -> Automated Builds): http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/Toolchains%20targetting%20Win32/Automated%20Builds/

The latest version to date is mingw-w32-bin_i686-linux_20130523.tar.bz2. Extract it into a new directory (the archive does not contain a root folder):

mkdir mingw-w32
cd mingw-w32
tar xjf ../mingw-w32-bin_i686-linux_20130523.tar.bz2

Finally, add the binaries to the PATH and export the base path for later use:

export PATH=$PATH:`pwd`/bin
export MINGW32_PATH=`pwd`

It is also possible to use the system package manager to install mingw32 (mingw-w64 for Debian/Ubuntu), but the associated compiler must support the C++11 features (g++ 4.9.0 or higher).

Compiling Qt

There are Qt binaries for mingw, but I did not managed to make them work (the tools are compiled for Windows, but we need them to work with Linux instead).

Download the source code for the latest Qt 5.5 release: http://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.5/5.5.0/single/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.5.0.tar.gz

Extract them, and go to the directory:

tar xzf ./qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.5.0.tar.gz
cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.5.0

Generate the Makefiles (takes some minutes):

nice ./configure -prefix $PWD/install-release-static -static -confirm-license -release -opensource -no-sql-sqlite -no-openssl -no-audio-backend -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-sse2 -xplatform win32-g++ -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=i686-w64-mingw32- -skip qtactiveqt -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtdoc -skip qtcanvas3d -skip qtactiveqt -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtserialport -skip qtquick1 -skip qtquickcontrols -skip qtscript -skip qtsensors -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets -skip qtxmlpatterns

Some of the Qt features not used by SpeedCrunch are disabled in order to speed up the build. Also, qtactiveqt fails to compile with mingw32.

Then, build Qt:

nice make install

This will put all the files into the install-release-static sub-folder. The building process is pretty long (at least 30 minutes to more than 1 hour). It could be speed up by using the -j option of make, which parallelizes the build process. Just specify the number of threads your CPU have, and it should decrease the build time significantly (e.g.: nice make -j 4 install for a 4 threads CPU). Note however that the build process for Qt5.5 does not seem to work well with parallelization.

Once Qt has been built, set an environment variable to the path which contains the produced files:

export QT_PATH_W32=`pwd`/install-release-static

Building SpeedCrunch

Download the source code of SpeedCrunch, and extract it:

wget -O SpeedCrunch-master.zip https://bitbucket.org/heldercorreia/speedcrunch/get/master.zip
unzip SpeedCrunch-master.zip

Build the Makefiles:

cd heldercorreia-speedcrunch-*/src
$QT_PATH_W32/bin/qmake -spec win32-g++ speedcrunch.pro

For the portable version of SpeedCrunch, the option "DEFINES+=SPEEDCRUNCH_PORTABLE" needs to be added:

$QT_PATH_W32/bin/qmake -spec win32-g++ "DEFINES+=SPEEDCRUNCH_PORTABLE" speedcrunch.pro

Then build the application:

make

The executable should be available in the release sub-folder as speedcrunch.exe.

Pack the SpeedCrunch executable (optional)

The final size of speedcrunch.exe is a bit big (>10MB), probably because of all the static libraries it contains. In order to reduce its size, it is possible to pack it with UPX:

upx --best speedcrunch.exe

This should reduce the size of the executable by 60%-70%. The executable will be erased with the packed version. Note that the version that comes with the Ubuntu package manager is less efficient than the compiled version available on the UPX project page, even though the version number is the same (v3.9.1).