Compiling Bitcoin-qt in Windows 7

[dscotese]

I've been flailing around and failing a lot, so I thought I'd start a thread and see if others have had any more luck.

BTW, how do I make the following list automatically numbered so steps are easily referenced?  I inserted the numbers after I finished the post.

• 1.I installed MinGW following the instructions at http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started.
• 2.I downloaded the QT libraries for Windows from http://qt-project.org/downloads (which is referred to, on that page, as "The QT SDK") and moved them into the MinGW directory as described the readme-qt.rst file in bitcoin-qt's doc directory.
• 3.I downloaded QT Creator (it wasn't installed as part of the SDK as implied by the info on the QT Libraries page) and installed it.
• 4.I ran QT Creator and opened the bitcoin-qt.pro file in it, and it said "Bitcoin-QT is not configured..." and "No valid version of QT..." something or other, which I fixed by following the instructions that accompanied the error, selecting qmake.exe from C:\Qt\4.8.3\bin
• 5.QT Creator said I had to add a toolchain, so I added MinGW by selecting g++.exe from C:\MinGW\bin.  I discovered that I had to then close and re-open QT Creator to make the "Bitcoin-QT is not configured..." message go away.
• 6.I had mistakenly put the qtgui_deps in the lib and include directories under MinGW, so I recopied the include and lib directories into C:\Qt\4.8.3, which I think is what "Copy the contents of the folder "deps" to "X:\\QtSDK\\mingw", replace X:\\ with the location where you installed the Qt SDK" means.  But that instruction insinuates that the QT SDK contains a folder called mingw which it does not.
• 7.When I try to build, QT Creator says ":-1: error: No rule to make target 'c:/Documents and Settings/dscotese/bitcoin-qt-build-desktop-Qt_4_8_3__4_8_3__Debug/build/build.h', needed by 'debug/bitcoin-qt.exe'.  Stop."
• 8.I still get "No Rule to make target", and also there is no build.h file in c:/Documents and Settings/dscotese/bitcoin-qt-build-desktop-Qt_4_8_3__4_8_3__Debug/build/; The directory has 5 files (Make and object-script) and three empty subdirectories (build, debug, and release).
• 9.I have undoubtedly made some obvious errors which I won't bother justifying.  I have a lot to learn about QT and MinGW so if anyone is up to condescending to me about my foolishness, it would be greatly appreciated.

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[dscotese]

I've made some progress so I thought I'd list it:

First, with the foolishness:  There are several places with warnings about using paths that contain spaces, like "c:/Documents and Settings/dscotese/bitcoin-qt-build-desktop-Qt_4_8_3__4_8_3__Debug/build/build.h" does.  So I moved everything to a path that has no spaces, but that didn't fix the problem.  I found "build.h" in the project file (bitcoin-qt.pro), and then found this pull request which explains exactly the problem I ran into.  Now I have other issues, but I have the feeling that this is the wrong place to discuss them...

The Wiki refers to a Developer and Technical Forum - which is now a link that goes nowhere.  I changed it to point to the parent forum of this Alternative Clients forum.

I also discovered that doing

Code:

git pull

in my bitcoin directory doesn't actually update.  I'm still learning git and figured out that I have to do

Code:

git pull origin master

I'll be posting my Windows build problems and solutions in the Issues section of the github project from now on.