How to Install Code::Blocks Nightly on Windows?

March 26th, 2007

Hi Everybody,

In this article I’ll discuss on how to install Code::Blocks Nightly on Windows. Most of the Code::Blocks (C::B) users start downloading Code::Blocks RC2, which was the last stable release. But RC2 is very old, around one and half years old. A lot of changes were made to the core and that is one of the reasons of not releasing another stable release within this period.

First download a latest nightly from the following forum. Go to that forum and you’ll find a number of posts. Read the most recent release announcement.

http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php/board,20.0.html

Code::Blocks nightly release file name will be in the following format. Generally you’ll find a file named CB_YYYYMMDD_revXXXX_win32.7z, where ‘X’ denotes revision number. Download this file.

Now extract the contents of this file to a folder. Please remember the following two points.

  1. Do not overwrite the contents of an existing Nightly or an older RC2 release installation directory contents. This may land you into troubles. There are major differences between RC2 core and latest Nightly core and they are incompatible with each other. If you overwrite an existing nightly,C::B may refuse to run if there is any changes made to the core and some plugins may fail.
  2. Before installing any C::B nightly, please remove older RC2 installation. Because the older RC2 created configuration files will conflict with newer ones.

Now Code::Blocks needs another two files to run. Both the files are also posted with each nightly releases. One file is wxWidgets runtime dll and the second one is MinGW runtime dll file. Download them and extract to the folder where codeblocks.exe file resides. These runtime files can be downloaded from the following link.

Your Code::Blocks nightly is now installed!!

If you still have any questions, please feel free to ask me. :)

2 Responses to “How to Install Code::Blocks Nightly on Windows?”

  1. # Commodore64on 30 Mar 2007 at 3:34 pm

    Hi Biplab,

    first of all thank you for the great job you are doing for Code::Blocks and wxWidgets.

    Thank you for this tutorial, also. I am suggesting to install Code::Blocks to several people, and it’s a pain to tell them how to install a nightly build. They are very reluctant to do so, and even if I manage to convince them, I have to explain how to do that.

    Unfortunately, many of those people are not experienced with MinGW, and do not wish to install it separately. (BTW, I think the MinGW download page is all but self-explanatory.) They like the simplicity of DevC++, Visual Studio etc.: install only one package and you are done. For this reason, I suggest them the following algorithm for installing Code::Blocks:

    1. Install C::B RC2
    2. In %ProgramFolder%\Codeblocks, remove:
    a. the folder “share”
    b. all the files
    3. Download the nightly builds and the runtime libraries, as your tutorial says, and unpack them in the Codeblocks folder.

    Best regards,
    Luca

  2. # Biplabon 31 Mar 2007 at 3:49 pm

    Hi Luca,

    Sorry for this late reply.

    I also agree with you that people often face problem with installing MinGW. There are couple of installers floating around.

    You may refer the following link. But they have older nightly as installer.

    http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~goetz/codeblocks/

    People often prefer simpler applications which just work out of the box. Even when I started coding, DevC++ was the biggest thing for me as it could run my small programs without much efforts. I agree with you that MinGW page is self explanatory, but still it creates problems for beginners.

    May be I can write one article on how to install MinGW, too.

    I’m not creating any installer of C::B as it can create a sort of parallel distribution which I personally don’t want.

    Let’s wait for the next release. :)

    Thanks for your comment.

    Regards,

    Biplab

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