History:How to Build Picard for Windows

This page explains the process of building the Picard installes for Windows. It only works for Picard 1.2 and newer, which no longer supports AmpliFIND.

Requirements

• Python 2.7.x
  • http://www.python.org/download/
  • Download and install "Python 2.7.x Windows Installer"
  • Add C:\Python27 to %PATH%
• PyQt 4.9.x
  • http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/download
  • Download and install "PyQt-Py2.7-x86-gpl-4.9.x-1.exe"
• Visual C++ 2008 Express
  • https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=14597
  • Download and install "vcsetup.exe"
• NSIS 2.46
  • http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Download
  • Download and install "nsis-2.46-setup.exe"
• Mutagen 1.20
  • http://code.google.com/p/mutagen/downloads/list
  • Download and unpack "mutagen-1.20.tar.gz"
  • python setup.py install
• MingGW
  • http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/
  • Download and install the latest "mingw-get-inst-xxxx.exe"
  • Uncheck the C compiler option, we need only the directory structure and mingw-get
  • Add C:\MinGW\bin to %PATH%
• Gettext
  • mingw-get install gettext

Running Picard From Sources

Before you can run Picard from sources, you need to build the C extension. Start the VS console using "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt", go to the source directory and run this command:

python setup.py build_ext -i

After you have done this, you can run Picard directly from the sources using:

python tagger.py

In order to have a fully functional copy of Picard, you need to get add discid.dll and fpcalc.exe to the source directory.

Building the Installer

If you have done all steps necessary to run Picard from sources and it works, you can build the installer using this command:

python setup.py bdist_nsis

Known issues

• It is possible that the resulting picard.exe does not show the proper file icon. This is probably a bug of py2exe on Vista. You can fix the icon with the tool Resource Hacker or any other tool, that can edit the resources in executables.