build: Improve build instructions

- Add package instructions for Ubuntu 15.10
- Clarify BerkeleyDB/wallet situation for unix
- Add basic build instructions for Windows (closes #1401)

doc/README.md

@@ -43,6 +43,8 @@ The following are developer notes on how to build Bitcoin on your native platfor
 
 - [OS X Build Notes](build-osx.md)
 - [Unix Build Notes](build-unix.md)
+- [Windows Build Notes](build-windows.md)
+- [OpenBSD Build Notes](build-openbsd.md)
 - [Gitian Building Guide](gitian-building.md)
 
 Development

doc/build-unix.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 UNIX BUILD NOTES
 ====================
-Some notes on how to build Bitcoin in Unix.
+Some notes on how to build Bitcoin Core in Unix.
 
 (for OpenBSD specific instructions, see [build-openbsd.md](build-openbsd.md))
 
@@ -63,23 +63,30 @@ Build requirements:
 
         sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autotools-dev autoconf pkg-config libssl-dev libevent-dev
 
-For Ubuntu 12.04 and later or Debian 7 and later libboost-all-dev has to be installed:
+On Ubuntu 15.10+ there are generic names for the individual boost development
+packages, so the following can be used to only install necessary parts of
+boost:
+
+        apt-get install libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-base-dev
+
+For Ubuntu before 15.10, or Debian 7 and later libboost-all-dev has to be installed:
 
         sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev
 
- db4.8 packages are available [here](https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin).
+BerkeleyDB is required for the wallet. db4.8 packages are available [here](https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin).
- You can add the repository using the following command:
+You can add the repository and install using the following commands:
 
         sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
         sudo apt-get update
-
- Ubuntu 12.04 and later have packages for libdb5.1-dev and libdb5.1++-dev,
- but using these will break binary wallet compatibility, and is not recommended.
-
-For other Debian & Ubuntu (with ppa):
-
         sudo apt-get install libdb4.8-dev libdb4.8++-dev
 
+Ubuntu and Debian have their own libdb-dev and libdb++-dev packages, but these will install
+BerkeleyDB 5.1 or later, which break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables which
+are based on BerkeleyDB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility,
+pass `--with-incompatible-bdb` to configure.
+
+See the section "Disable-wallet mode" to build Bitcoin Core without wallet.
+
 Optional:
 
         sudo apt-get install libminiupnpc-dev (see --with-miniupnpc and --enable-upnp-default)
@@ -88,23 +95,22 @@ ZMQ dependencies:
 
         sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev (provides ZMQ API 4.x)
 
-
 Dependencies for the GUI: Ubuntu & Debian
 -----------------------------------------
 
 If you want to build Bitcoin-Qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development
-are installed. Either Qt 4 or Qt 5 are necessary to build the GUI.
+are installed. Either Qt 5 or Qt 4 are necessary to build the GUI.
 If both Qt 4 and Qt 5 are installed, Qt 4 will be used. Pass `--with-gui=qt5` to configure to choose Qt5.
 To build without GUI pass `--without-gui`.
 
-To build with Qt 4 you need the following:
+To build with Qt 5 (recommended) you need the following:
-
-    sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
-
-For Qt 5 you need the following:
 
     sudo apt-get install libqt5gui5 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
 
+Alternatively, to build with Qt 4 you need the following:
+
+    sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
+
 libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:
 
     sudo apt-get install libqrencode-dev

doc/build-windows.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+WINDOWS BUILD NOTES
+====================
+
+Some notes on how to build Bitcoin Core for Windows.
+
+Most developers use cross-compilation from Ubuntu to build executables for
+Windows. This is also used to build the release binaries.
+
+Building on Windows itself is possible (for example using msys / mingw-w64),
+but no one documented the steps to do this. If you are doing this, please contribute them.
+
+Cross-compilation
+-------------------
+
+These steps can be performed on, for example, an Ubuntu VM. The depends system
+will also work on other Linux distributions, however the commands for
+installing the toolchain will be different.
+
+First install the toolchains:
+
+    sudo apt-get install g++-mingw-w64-i686 mingw-w64-i686-dev g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 mingw-w64-x86-64-dev
+
+To build executables for Windows 32-bit:
+
+    cd depends
+    make HOST=i686-w64-mingw32 -j4
+    cd ..
+    ./configure --prefix=`pwd`/depends/i686-w64-mingw32
+    make
+
+To build executables for Windows 64-bit:
+
+    cd depends
+    make HOST=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -j4
+    cd ..
+    ./configure --prefix=`pwd`/depends/x86_64-w64-mingw32
+    make
+
+For further documentation on the depends system see [README.md](../depends/README.md) in the depends directory.
+