Start the Visual C++ Installation Wizard (Figure 1, “Visual C++ 6.0 installation wizard”) and click Next.

Figure 1. Visual C++ 6.0 installation wizard

If you agree to the license (Figure 2, “Visual C++ license dialog”), put the checkmark and click Next.

Figure 2. Visual C++ license dialog

Enter the registration information in the form (Figure 3, “Visual C++ product ID dialog”) and click Next.

Figure 3. Visual C++ product ID dialog

When asked for the installation location (Figure 4, “Visual C++ installation location”), choose c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common and click Next.

Figure 4. Visual C++ installation location

To continue with the installation processs (Figure 5, “Visual C++ standard setup”), click Next

Figure 5. Visual C++ standard setup

Note down the Product ID (Figure 6, “”) and click OK.

Figure 6. 

When asked for the setup type (Figure 7, “Visual C++ setup type”), click on the Standard button.

Figure 7. Visual C++ setup type

When asked to register the environment variables (Figure 8, “Visual C++ environment variables”), you can leave the option to register the environment variables unchecked, though it does no harm to check this option. Click OK

Figure 8. Visual C++ environment variables

Read the information about the NT debug symbols (Figure 9, “NT debug symbols”) and click OK.

Figure 9. NT debug symbols

Note that the Visual C++ setup has finished successfully (Figure 10, “Visual C++ setup success”) and click OK.

Figure 10. Visual C++ setup success

Start the MSDN setup (Figure 11, “MSDN Library setup dialog”) and verify that the option to install MSDN is checked. Click Next.

Figure 11. MSDN Library setup dialog

Enter the path of your CD-DROM drive (Figure 12, “CD-ROM drive selection”) and click OK.

Figure 12. CD-ROM drive selection

If you agree to the license terms (Figure 13, “MSDN Library setup”), click Next.

Figure 13. MSDN Library setup

Note down the Product ID shown in Figure 14, “MSDN Library Product ID” for future reference and click OK.

Figure 14. MSDN Library Product ID

If you agree to the license terms (Figure 15, “License terms”), click I agree.

Figure 15. License terms

When asked for the installation type (Figure 16, “MSDN Library installation type”), click on Standard.

Figure 16. MSDN Library installation type

When the MSDN Library setup is complete (Figure 17, “MSDN Library setup complete”), click OK.

Figure 17. MSDN Library setup complete

You may register your Visual C++ copy online (Figure 18, “Visual C++ registration”). Click Finish to leave the installation wizard.

Figure 18. Visual C++ registration

Download Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 6 can be downloaded from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/Aa718364.aspx.

Start the Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 6 setup.

When asked for a location to place the extracted files (Figure 19, “Temporary files location”), specify a temporary folder, e.g. c:\tmp. Click OK>.

Figure 19. Temporary files location

When asked if the temporary folder should be created (Figure 20, “Temporary folder creation”), click Yes.

Figure 20. Temporary folder creation

Start the Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 setup (Figure 21, “Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 welcome page”) from the temporary folder and click Continue.

Figure 21. Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 welcome page

If you agree to the Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 license agreement (Figure 22, “Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 License Agreement”), click I Agree.

Figure 22. Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 6 License Agreement

When asked for a Windows reboot (Figure 23, “Windows reboot”), click Windows reboot.

Figure 23. Windows reboot

The GTK+ All-in-one bundle should be used and can be downloaded from Sourceforge.

Unzip the contents of the folder to C:\GTK.

Copy c:\gtk\bin\intl.dll to c:\gtk\bin\libintl.dll.

While glib includes its own copy of iconv, libxml2 requires a separate iconv installation.

The libxml2 iconv version can be downloaded from http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html.

Unzip the file and copy the contents of the iconv-1.9.2.win32 folder to C:\GTK.

Download libxml2 from http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html.

Unzip the file and copy the contents of the libxml2-2.7.8.win32 folder to C:\GTK.

LibArt_LGPL is the graphics library used by Dia's libart plugin. It is available from http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/libart_lgpl/2.3/.

Extract the contents of libart_lgpl-2.3.21-1_win32.zip and libart_lgpl-dev-2.3.21-1_win32.zip to c:\gtk.

In case you don't want to compile the libart plugin, comment it out in plug-ins/makefile.msc.

Use the following script to create libart_lgpl_2-2.lib:

dumpbin /exports c:\gtk\bin\libart_lgpl_2-2.dll > c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.dumpbin
echo EXPORTS > c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.def
sed -n "/RVA/,/Summary/p" c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.dumpbin | sed -n "/[0-9]/p" | sed "s/.* //" >> c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.def
lib /def:c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.def /out:c:\gtk\lib\libart_lgpl_2-2.lib /machine:x86

NSIS is used to build the Dia installer.

If you intend to build the Python plug-in, install Python 2.3 to c:\python23.

Newer Python versions are not build against msvcrt.dll and thus require to rebuild all libraries that Dia is linked against. Therefore building Dia with newer Python versions is not covered by this document.

In case you don't want to compile the Python plugin and language bindings, comment out the nmake calls for the bindings and plug-ins\python folders. Edit c:\gtk\dia\makefile.msc as indicated by the comments in the file (around lines 58 and 67).

The swig command is required to build the Python bindings.

Download swig from http://www.swig.org and unzip swig.exe and the lib folder to C:\GTK\bin.

The LibXSLT library is used by the xslt plugin. Thus you won't be able to build the xslt plugin without LibXSLT.

Download libxslt from http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html.

Unzip the file and copy the contents of the libxslt-1.1.26.win32 folder to C:\GTK.

In case you don't want to compile the xslt plugin, comment it out in plug-ins/makefile.msc.

The librsvg library is used to render SVG images as image objects. Note that librsvg is not used for the SVG import, SVG export or the Dia shapes.

Download librsvg-dev_2.32.1.-1_win32.zip, librsvg_2.32.1-1_win32.zip and svg-gdk-pixbuf-loader_2.32.1-1_win32.zip from http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/librsvg/2.32/.

Unzip those files and copy the contents to C:\GTK.

Download http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dia-installer/dia_extra_src_msvc_2009-11-05.zip and unzip the contents to c:\.

Download and apply the following patch: 0001-Bug-679417-Work-around-libpixbufloaders-.dll-install.patch

In order to enable debugging, run nmake -f makefile.msc DEBUG=1.

In order to enable console output, use dia.exe, not diaw.exe. This allows to see error and warning messages produced by dia.

The MS Visual C++ compiler is used to compile dia for win32. Versions 5, 6 have been used successfully. The compiler is invoked using the cl command.

	Caution
	When compiling with Visual C++ version 7, you'll have to recompile all libraries as you'll have to link against msvcrt7.dll instead of msvcrt.dll. This applies to all GTK+ libraries which you'll have to rebuild on your own. This also applies to newer Visual C++ versions.

Compiling Dia for Windows with gcc from the MinGW distribution should be possible. However, compilation with gcc is not covered in this document. Make sure to check Dia's bugzilla for MinGW-related patches.

The makefiles work with MS nmake. The nmake tool comes with MS Visual Studio.

The standard MS command line interpreter cmd.exe is used to compile dia.

With the setup mentioned above, you should be able to compile dia out of the box. However, you should know which files control the build process. In addition to the various makefile.msc's that are introduced below, there are two important files:

If you're working with updated versions of some of the libraries you may have to edit these files.