GMP Install Instruction for Windows Platform

Currently Core Library (from v1.4) uses GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GMP) as its low level big number package. GMP is a free library for arbitrary precision arithmetic, operating on signed integers, rational numbers, and floating point numbers. As GMP was originally designed to work under Unix platform, there is few information about how to compile and install under Windows platform. I wrote this page to help you simplify installation.
While there are many C/C++ compilers available under Windows Platform, I will only focus on the following 4 compilers/environments: Cygwin GCC, MinGW GCC, Visual C++ 6.0 and .Net which are freely available or widely used. If you have experiences on other compilers, please let me know.
To help your development, GMP 4.1 source distribution and pre-compiled libraries for these environments are provided here for download. It should work for Pentium III or above.

GMP 4.1 source distribution: gmp-4.1.tar.gz

static GMP library and header file for Cygwin: gmp-static-cygwin-4.1.tar.gz

static GMP library and header file for MinGW: gmp-static-mingw-4.1.tar.gz

static GMP library and header file for Visual C++: gmp-static-vc-4.1.2.zip

dynamic GMP library and header file for Cygwin: gmp-dynamic-cygwin-4.1.tar.gz

dynamic GMP library and header file for MinGW: gmp-dynamic-mingw-4.1.tar.gz

dynamic GMP library and header file for Visual C++: gmp-dynamic-vc-4.1.2.zip

patches and project files

In the following, I assume that you want to download GMP to ${gmp_download}, build GMP at ${gmp_build}, and install GMP to ${gmp_install}

Cygwin & MinGW (Building static GMP library)

Cygwin is a free Unix-like environment, developed by Red Hat, for Windows. This environment is very stable and has no hidden overhead (unlike some other operating systems). All the common tools and functionality you expect in a Unix environment are available, including "make", "gcc", "gdb", etc. Installing GMP under Cygwin is very similar with the installations under other Unix platforms, e.g. Solaris and Linux, except that you cannot build static and shared libraries at the same time. Here is the detail instruction:

Install latest Cygwin. Make sure that you choose to install "gcc", "m4"and "make"since the default installation doesn't include them.

Download latest GMP from GNU MP to ${gmp_download}.

Run "Cygwin Bash", unzip and untar GMP into ${gmp_build} using following command:

  cd ${gmp_build}
  tar xzvf ${gmp_download}/gmp-x.x.x.tar.gz

Configure GMP for compilation:

  cd gmp-x.x.x
  ./configure --prefix=${gmp_install}

Build GMP:

  make

Install GMP header files and lib files:

  make install

MinGW is a collection of header files and import libraries combined with GNU toolsets that allow one to use GCC and produce native Win32 programs that do not rely on any 3rd-party DLLs, while the programs compiled under cygwin need a DLL named "cygwin1.dll". To provide a similar environment like cygwin, MSYS(Minimal SYStem) was created. If you have installed MSYS Version 1.0.7 or above, then the installation is as same as above cygwin environment:

Install latest MinGW first, and then MSYS.

Download latest GMP from GNU MP to ${gmp_download}.

Run "MSYS", unzip and untar GMP into ${gmp_build} using following command:

  cd ${gmp_build}
  tar xzvf ${gmp_download}/gmp-x.x.x.tar.gz

Configure GMP for compilation:

  cd gmp-x.x.x
  ./configure --prefix=${gmp_install}

Build GMP:

  make

Install GMP header files and lib files:

  make install

For MSYS's earlier version, "make.exe"and "ranlib.exe"in MSYS will fail to process GMP's configure script. To fix this, you can download "make.exe"and "ranlib.exe"to overwrite your old version, then follow step 2-6.

For those who would like to use the Cygwin environment for development MinGW, you can follow these steps:

Install latest Cygwin. Make sure that you choose to install "gcc", "m4"and "make"since the default installation doesn't include them.

Install latest MinGW into ${mingw}.

(For MinGW 2.0 earlier only) Rename MinGW's "make.exe"(${mingw}/bin/make.exe) to "mingw32-make.exe".

Add ${mingw}/bin at the beginning of the environment variable PATH.

  export PATH=${mingw}/bin:$PATH (for bash, sh)

or

  setenv PATH ${mingw}/bin:$PATH (for csh, tcsh)

Download latest GMP from GNU MP to ${gmp_download}.

Run "Cygwin Bash", unzip and untar GMP into ${gmp_build} using following command:

  cd ${gmp_build}
  tar xzvf ${gmp_download}/gmp-x.x.x.tar.gz

Modify the "configure"script in GMP, change these lines (toward the end)

  # Make a symlink if possible; otherwise try a hard link.
  ln -s $ac_rel_source $ac_dest 2>/dev/null ||
    ln $srcdir/$ac_source $ac_dest ||

to

  # Make a symlink if possible; otherwise try a hard link.
  #ln -s $ac_rel_source $ac_dest 2>/dev/null ||
    ln $srcdir/$ac_source $ac_dest ||

(Add a comment on first "ln -s"so hard link are created instead of symbolic link)

Configure GMP for compilation:

  cd gmp-x.x.x
  ./configure --build=pentium3-pc-mingw32 --prefix=${gmp_install}

(replace "pentium3-pc"by your CPU type)

Build GMP:

  make

Install GMP header files and lib files:

  make install

Cygwin & MinGW (Building dynamic GMP library)

As I mentioned above, GMP cannot build static and shared libraries at the same time and it will only build static library by default. To use dynamic library, i.e DLL under windows platform, you need to add the options "--disable-static --enable-shared "when you configure GMP, i.e. run this command:

  ./configure --prefix=${gmp_install} --disable-static --enable-shared

A windows DLL "cyggmp-3.dll"(Cygwin) or "libgmp-3.dll"(MinGW) will be generated and you can link it with your executable programs as usual under Cygwin & MinGW except that when you run them, you have put these DLLs in some path which is listed in environment variable $PATH.
To ensure that these DLLs can be called by a Microsoft Visual C++ program, you must generate an import library (.lib) for them, using Microsoft LIB tool:

  cd gmp-x.x.x/.libs
  lib /machine:i386 /def:cyggmp-3.dll-def (for Cygwin) 

or

  
  lib /machine:i386 /def:libgmp-3.dll-def (for MinGW) 

Visual C++ 6.0 & Visual C++ .Net

In Core Library distribution, we provide patch files for building GMP library under Visual C++:

Download latest GMP and unzip to ${gmp_build}

Copy all files under patches/4.1-static (or patches/4.1-dynamic for building DLL) to ${gmp_build}

Open gmp.dsw ( gmp.vcproj for VC++.Net) to build GMP

After building, you can use gmp.h , lib/gmp.lib , lib/gmpDebug.lib to build your GMP application. (If you build GMP DLL, then you need gmp.dll or gmpDebug.dll for runing your application.)

Enjoy!
--Zilin Du (zilin "at"cs.nyu.edu)
Last Update: Jan 12, 2006
http://cs.nyu.edu/exact/core/gmp/