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I'd like to compile Litecoin for Windows, but have difficulties doing so. To be specific: I want to create the Windows executable (.exe) GUI (qt) Litecoin client (to be more specific I want to compile the executable for an alt-coin based on litecoin, but the code base is the same as litecoin).

Many tutorials are either focused on compiling for Linux, or they focus on Bitcoin compiling, which is a bit different nowadays than Litecoin. Rather than explaining my specific problems, which are likely unique to my situation, I was wondering what a recommended Operating System (and version) is to compile Litecoin? Who has specific (preferably smooth) experience building the GUI litecoin client for Windows?

A useful relevant topic is this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149479.0

But this is based on bitcoin, not litecoin. This referenced tutorial has a bit on Windows, but it's not too optimistic:

Windows -Qt

This is the trickiest one to crack of the GUI wallets. I am going to detail how I got this to work and offer you an easy way to get the dependencies in an attempt to make this work for you too. That said, it may not–and I’ve already said I won’t do tech support. So here’s the deal. I got this to work and then duplicated it on a second machine to ensure it wasn’t a fluke! Most of the information needed to compile the basic coind.exe or GUI wallet is in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149479.0 Unfortunately nothing is as easy as it seems, and although the MinGW and QT installs went fine, I couldn’t compile it without a few tweaks to the .pro file.

In this tutorial, Windows is used to create the executable, but I understand one can also use Linux to create Windows executables, right? There are few experiences documenting successful or smooth compiling of Litecoin (forks) for Windows, so I was wondering if people do have good experiences doing so and what kind of OS or approach they used.

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  • I'd go with Ubuntu as it's the distribution all guides are most likely going to focus on.
    – John T
    Mar 19, 2014 at 20:55
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    On windows this guide helped me: andarazoroflove.org/…
    – jamd315
    Mar 19, 2014 at 22:14
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    The title of your question is misleading. The best OS for compiling any bitcoin variant would clearly be a Linux dist. What you're asking is "What is the recommended OS for compiling a Windows binary for Litecoin."
    – Todd Chaffee
    Mar 29, 2014 at 10:21
  • I've tried using the following as a baseline, bitcoinqtmsvc2012.codeplex.com however also needed some tweaking, but usefull resource for anyone looking to try.
    – hafnero
    Mar 29, 2014 at 21:58

2 Answers 2

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The Litecoin source tree, in the doc/ folder, provides a file regarding building on Windows, using MinGW and MSYS. I can't personally vouch for those instructions, never having used them myself, so if you go that route, good luck. The way that the release binaries are built, if I'm not mistaken, is using the Gitian builder. If you're looking to do a Windows build, I would try that. If you want to actually use Gitian, you can clone the repo, and use the readme file to get Gitian set up, and then follow the build segment of the release process to do the actual build. On the other hand, if you're not necessarily looking for determinism or the ability to reproduce the exact build, you could try taking a look at the Gitian build scripts to see what packages are being used, what commands are run, et cetera, and try to reproduce that on a Linux system.

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I have compiled litecoin-qt on Ubuntu 12.04 before. First install the necessary packages:

sudo apt-get install qt4-qmake libqt4-dev build-essential libboost1.48-all-dev libssl-dev libdb++-dev libminiupnpc-dev

Then, in the directory of the litecoin source code, run

qmake
make

And you're done!

However, the compiled file is a Linux binary, so you'll have to use it on Linux. As far as I know, trying to compile a Windows binary on Linux would be even harder than just compiling it on Windows.

Note: This answer was posted before the question was clarified.

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  • Thanks but not really what I am looking for. I am specifically looking for compiling the Windows executable...
    – user
    Mar 20, 2014 at 4:37
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    The question should be rephrased, as it's not clear what you're asking. Are you asking which is the best version of Windows to run while compiling litecoin?
    – Jay
    Mar 20, 2014 at 17:42
  • @user1162541: I think it would be best if you explained your "unique situation" and why you can't just use the provided binary.
    – Tony
    Mar 20, 2014 at 18:40
  • @John Thanks, I have rephrased the question to make it clearer.
    – please delete me
    Mar 20, 2014 at 20:13
  • @Tony I foresee the need to frequently recompile and would like to find the best configuration for this, so before trying to solve this problem I'd like to see if there are specific OS configurations that people recommend that make the process overall easier. I have added more detail in the post.
    – please delete me
    Mar 20, 2014 at 20:14

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