The testconsensus project is not integral to the Bitcoin Core code. It was originally added as a quick and dirty demo of how to do a consensus check with the msvc build. There are better examples.
PR #23438 made a change that caused a compiler error with the buildmsvc/testconsensus code. Rather than leave it hanging around to incur potential bitrot, or furhter PR build failures, it should be removed.
The current appveyor config is using the VS2019 preview image so the latest prebuilt Qt5.12.11 binaries can be used, see #22224.
Appveyor updated the Visual Studio 2019 image to msbuild v16.10.1 on 14th of June. This is the version used to build the latest Qt binaries and removes the need to use the Appveyor VS2019 preview image.
This PR was motivated by a comment in GUI PR (257) regarding a suggested improvement not being supported by VS2017.
When checking whether master can still be built with the VS2017 toolset ABI issues were encountered. Most likely due to the pre-compiled Qt binaries that are used.
It does not seem worth the effort to try and support VS2017, which would most likely require additional Qt binaries, or lengthy instructions on how to build static Qt binaries on Windows (which is very error prone and tedious).
Added advisory note about build not working with earlier Visual Studio versions.
Fixed grammar.
Tidied up debug and release configuration blocks in common project file to avoid duplication.
Updated appveyor config to use latest Visual Studio 2019 image.
Changed appveyor config file hash to use a new version of Qt pre-compiled binaries built for Visual Studio 2019 v16.8.1.
Bumped vcpkg version to tag '2020.11-1' for binary caching feature.
See #20392 for related discussion.
This fixes the appveyor CI job, see #20066.
Currently the job fails because some of the vcpkg dependencies need to install msys2 and the hardcoded mirror in the vcpkg config is down.
Vcpkg commit 76a7e9248fb3c57350b559966dcaa2d52a5e4458 adds new mirrors to the hardcoded list.
The vcpkg tool has introduced a proper way to use manifests, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/vcpkg-accelerate-your-team-development-environment-with-binary-caching-and-manifests/. This PR replaces the custom text file mechanism with the new manifest approach.
It is planned that vckpg manifests will include the ability to version dependencies in the future. Dependency versions would solve a number of issues that currently require workarounds with the appveyor CI.
Set vcpkg manifest version to 1 to avoid any perception it's related to any release or other version numbering.
- Update Visual Studio instructions.
- Remove x64 platform conditional from bitcoin-qt project configuration.
- Set use native environment toolset to fix linker warning.
- Ignore linker warning about precompiled type information missing for test_bitcoin_qt.
msvc warning C4834 for the Bitcoin Core build was introduced by Visual Studio 16.4.0. This PR adds an ignore rule for the warning (it's related to the nodiscard attribute and is not considered relevant).
An additional side effect of the msvc compiler update is the prebuilt Qt5.9.8 libraries cannot be linked due to being built with an earlier version of the compiler. To fix this a new Qt5.9.8 version has been compiled and the appveyor job updated to use them. The GitHub Actions job needs to continue to use the original Qt5.9.8 libraries until the latest GitHub Windows image also updates to >= Visual Studio 2019 v16.4.
An issue arose when attempting to switch back to the main repo version of leveldb when the bitcoin data directory uses a unicode path. The leveldb windows file IO wrapper was using the *A ANSI win32 calls instead of the Unicode *W ones. This unit test will catch if the path created by leveldb doesn't match what we're expecting. For more info see https://github.com/google/leveldb/issues/755.
- Update build image from Visual Studio 2017 to Visual Studio 2019.
- Updated Qt static library from Qt5.9.7 to Qt5.9.8.
- Added commands to update vcpkg port files (this does not update already installed packages).
- Updated vcpkg package list as per #17309.
- Removed commands setting common project file options. Now done via common.init.vcxproj include.
- Changed msbuild verbosity from normal to quiet. Normal rights a LOT of logs and impacts appveyor job duration.
Updated msvc project configs:
- Updated platform toolset from v141 to v142.
- Updated Qt static library from Qt5.9.7 to Qt5.9.8.
- Added ignore for linker warning building bitcoin-qt program.
- Added missing util/str.cpp class file to test_bitcoin project file.
- Added steps to specify required source location for Windows WSL
builds.
- Attempted to make the introduction and options for building on Windows
clearer.
Aaron Clauson