If you want to rebuild PuTTY from source, we provide a variety of
Makefiles and equivalents. (If you have fetched the source from
-Subversion, you'll have to generate the Makefiles yourself -- see
+Git, you'll have to generate the Makefiles yourself -- see
below.)
+There are various compile-time directives that you can use to
+disable or modify certain features; it may be necessary to do this
+in some environments. They are documented in `Recipe', and in
+comments in many of the generated Makefiles.
+
For building on Windows:
- windows/Makefile.vc is for command-line builds on MS Visual C++
systems. Change into the `windows' subdirectory and type `nmake
-f Makefile.vc' to build all the PuTTY binaries.
- (We've also had one report of success building with the
- OpenWatcom compiler -- www.openwatcom.org -- using Makefile.vc
- with `wmake -ms -f makefile.vc' and NO_MULTIMON, although we
- haven't tried this ourselves.)
+ As of 2017, we successfully compile PuTTY with both Visual Studio
+ 7 (2003) and Visual Studio 14 (2015), so our guess is that it will
+ probably build with versions in between those as well.
- Inside the windows/MSVC subdirectory are MS Visual Studio project
files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
- These have been tested on Visual Studio 6.
+ These have been tested on Visual Studio 7 and 10.
You should be able to build each PuTTY utility by loading the
corresponding .dsp file in Visual Studio. For example,
Makefile.bor' while in the `windows' subdirectory to build all
the PuTTY binaries.
- - windows/Makefile.cyg is for Cygwin / mingw32 installations. Type
- `make -f Makefile.cyg' while in the `windows' subdirectory to
- build all the PuTTY binaries. Note that by default the multiple
- monitor support is excluded from the Cygwin build, since at the
- time of writing Cygwin doesn't include the necessary headers.
+ - windows/Makefile.mgw is for MinGW / Cygwin installations. Type
+ `make -f Makefile.mgw' while in the `windows' subdirectory to
+ build all the PuTTY binaries.
+
+ MinGW and friends can lag behind other toolchains in their support
+ for the Windows API. Compile-time levers are provided to exclude
+ some features; the defaults are set appropriately for the
+ 'mingw-w64' cross-compiler provided with Ubuntu 14.04. If you are
+ using an older toolchain, you may need to exclude more features;
+ alternatively, you may find that upgrading to a recent version of
+ the 'w32api' package helps.
- windows/Makefile.lcc is for lcc-win32. Type `make -f
Makefile.lcc' while in the `windows' subdirectory. (You will
probably need to specify COMPAT=-DNO_MULTIMON.)
+ - Inside the windows/DEVCPP subdirectory are Dev-C++ project
+ files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
+
+The PuTTY team actively use Makefile.vc (with VC7) and Makefile.mgw
+(with mingw32), so we'll probably notice problems with those
+toolchains fairly quickly. Please report any problems with the other
+toolchains mentioned above.
+
For building on Unix:
- unix/configure is for Unix and GTK. If you don't have GTK, you
should still be able to build the command-line utilities (PSCP,
- PSFTP, Plink, PuTTYgen) using this script. To use it, change
- into the `unix' subdirectory, run `./configure' and then `make'.
-
- - unix/Makefile.gtk is for non-autoconfigured builds. This makefile
- expects you to change into the `unix' subdirectory, then run `make
- -f Makefile.gtk'. Note that Unix PuTTY has mostly only been tested
- on Linux so far; portability problems such as BSD-style ptys or
- different header file requirements are expected.
-
- For the graphical utilities, Gtk+-1.2 is required. Gtk+-2.0 is not
- yet supported.
-
- There is an `install' target; note that by default it tries to
- install `man' pages, which need to be built using Halibut first --
- see below.
+ PSFTP, Plink, PuTTYgen) using this script. To use it, change into
+ the `unix' subdirectory, run `./configure' and then `make'. Or you
+ can do the same in the top-level directory (we provide a little
+ wrapper that invokes configure one level down), which is more like
+ a normal Unix source archive but doesn't do so well at keeping the
+ per-platform stuff in each platform's subdirectory; it's up to you.
+
+ - unix/Makefile.gtk and unix/Makefile.ux are for non-autoconfigured
+ builds. These makefiles expect you to change into the `unix'
+ subdirectory, then run `make -f Makefile.gtk' or `make -f
+ Makefile.ux' respectively. Makefile.gtk builds all the programs but
+ relies on Gtk, whereas Makefile.ux builds only the command-line
+ utilities and has no Gtk dependence.
+
+ - For the graphical utilities, any of Gtk+-1.2, Gtk+-2.0, and Gtk+-3.0
+ should be supported. If you have more than one installed, you can
+ manually specify which one you want by giving the option
+ '--with-gtk=N' to the configure script where N is 1, 2, or 3.
+ (The default is the newest available, of course.) In the absence
+ of any Gtk version, the configure script will automatically
+ construct a Makefile which builds only the command-line utilities;
+ you can manually create this condition by giving configure the
+ option '--without-gtk'.
+
+ - pterm would like to be setuid or setgid, as appropriate, to permit
+ it to write records of user logins to /var/run/utmp and
+ /var/log/wtmp. (Of course it will not use this privilege for
+ anything else, and in particular it will drop all privileges before
+ starting up complex subsystems like GTK.) By default the makefile
+ will not attempt to add privileges to the pterm executable at 'make
+ install' time, but you can ask it to do so by running configure
+ with the option '--enable-setuid=USER' or '--enable-setgid=GROUP'.
+
+ - The Unix Makefiles have an `install' target. Note that by default
+ it tries to install `man' pages; if you have fetched the source via
+ Git then you will need to have built these using Halibut
+ first - see below.
+
+ - It's also possible to build the Windows version of PuTTY to run
+ on Unix by using Winelib. To do this, change to the `windows'
+ directory and run `make -f Makefile.mgw CC=winegcc RC=wrc'.
All of the Makefiles are generated automatically from the file
-`Recipe' by the Perl script `mkfiles.pl'. Additions and corrections
-to Recipe and the mkfiles.pl are much more useful than additions and
-corrections to the alternative Makefiles themselves. The Unix `configure'
-script and its various requirements are generated by the shell script
-`mkauto.sh', which requires GNU Autoconf, GNU Automake, and Gtk.
+`Recipe' by the Perl script `mkfiles.pl' (except for the Unix one,
+which is generated by the `configure' script; mkfiles.pl only
+generates the input to automake). Additions and corrections to Recipe,
+mkfiles.pl and/or configure.ac are much more useful than additions and
+corrections to the actual Makefiles, Makefile.am or Makefile.in.
+
+The Unix `configure' script and its various requirements are generated
+by the shell script `mkauto.sh', which requires GNU Autoconf, GNU
+Automake, and Gtk; if you've got the source from Git rather
+than using one of our source snapshots, you'll need to run this
+yourself. The input file to Automake is generated by mkfiles.pl along
+with all the rest of the makefiles, so you will need to run mkfiles.pl
+and then mkauto.sh.
Documentation (in various formats including Windows Help and Unix
-`man' pages) is to be built from the Halibut (`.but') files in the
-`doc' subdirectory using `doc/Makefile'. Halibut can be found at
-<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.
+`man' pages) is built from the Halibut (`.but') files in the `doc'
+subdirectory using `doc/Makefile'. If you aren't using one of our
+source snapshots, you'll need to do this yourself. Halibut can be
+found at <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.
The PuTTY home web site is