Compiling TortoiseCVS with Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 Express Edition (Visual Studio 2008)

By Gabriel Genellina
  1. Checkout TortoiseCVS source tree:

    CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@tortoisecvs.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tortoisecvs

    In this document, I'll use [TortoiseCVS] to refer to the top directory of this sandbox - c:\prog\TortoiseCVS in my case.

  2. Download the "flex++", "bison" and "m4" packages from the GnuWin32 project and install in the default location (that is, %PROGRAMFILES%\GnuWin32).

  3. Download and install CMake (latest release: 2.6.2)

  4. Execute runcmake-vc9.bat (preferably in a CMD console window). This should create all the required project files.

  5. Open [TortoiseCVS]\build\vc9win32\TortoiseCVS.sln in Visual Studio and build the solution.

  6. The main shell extension should build fine. I didn't bother to go beyond that (no translations, no InnoSetup installer, ...). I just copy TortoiseAct.exe and TortoiseShell.dll onto an existing TortoiseCVS installation (ok, it may be tricky sometimes) and that's all.