Cross Compiling FileZilla 3 for Windows under Ubuntu or Debian GNU/Linux

This documentation explains how to setup a build environment for FileZilla 3 for Windows and how to compile it under Debian using Mingw-w64. It will take less time and is more simple than Compiling FileZilla 3 under Windows.

OS version

Any recent Linux should do the trick. For the sake of simplicity, this guide focuses on Debian(-based) distributions.

We strongly recommend to use Debian 12 (Bookworkm) or later (recommended)

Setting up the build environment

As root, execute:

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt update
apt install automake autoconf libtool make gettext lzip xz-utils
apt install mingw-w64 pkg-config wx-common wine wine64 wine32 wine-binfmt subversion git

Back as normal user, execute:

mkdir ~/prefix
mkdir ~/src
export PATH="$HOME/prefix/bin:$PATH"
export LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/prefix/lib"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/prefix/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/prefix/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
export CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/prefix/include"
export TARGET_HOST=x86_64-w64-mingw32

wine reg add HKCU\\Environment /f /v PATH /d "`x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ -print-search-dirs | grep ^libraries | sed 's/^libraries: =//' | sed 's/:/;z:/g' | sed 's/^\\//z:\\\\\\\\/' | sed 's/\\//\\\\/g'`"

GMP

cd ~/src
wget https://gmplib.org/download/gmp/gmp-6.3.0.tar.lz
tar xf gmp-6.3.0.tar.lz
cd gmp-6.3.0
CC_FOR_BUILD=gcc ./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --disable-static --enable-shared --enable-fat
make
make install

Nettle

cd ~/src
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/nettle/nettle-3.9.1.tar.gz
tar xf nettle-3.9.1.tar.gz
cd nettle-3.9.1
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --enable-fat
make
make install

GnuTLS

cd ~/src
wget https://www.gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/gnutls/v3.8/gnutls-3.8.1.tar.xz
tar xvf gnutls-3.8.1.tar.xz
cd gnutls-3.8.1
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --without-p11-kit --with-included-libtasn1 --with-included-unistring --disable-srp-authentication --disable-dtls-srtp-support --disable-heartbeat-support --disable-psk-authentication --disable-anon-authentication --disable-openssl-compatibility --without-tpm --without-brotli --disable-cxx --disable-doc --enable-threads=windows --disable-tools
make
make install

Compile SQLite

cd ~/src
wget https://sqlite.org/2018/sqlite-autoconf-32600-00.tar.gz
tar xvzf sqlite-autoconf-3260000.tar.gz
cd sqlite-autoconf-3260000
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --disable-dynamic-extensions
make
make install

NSIS

cd ~/src
wget https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nsis/nsis-3.09-setup.exe
wine nsis-3.09-setup.exe /S

The above may print a lot of errors and warnings. Ignore them, check for success this way:

[ -f "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/NSIS/makensis.exe" ] && echo "Success!"

Compile wxWidgets

cd ~/src
git clone --recurse-submodules --branch 3.2 --single-branch https://github.com/wxWidgets/wxWidgets.git wx3
cd wx3
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" -enable-shared --enable-unicode
make
make install
cp $HOME/prefix/lib/wx*.dll $HOME/prefix/bin

Compile libfilezilla

cd ~/src
svn co https://svn.filezilla-project.org/svn/libfilezilla/trunk lfz
cd lfz
autoreconf -i
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static 
make
make install

Compile Boost Regex

cd ~/src
wget https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.85.0/source/boost_1_85_0.tar.bz2
tar xf boost_1_85_0.tar.bz2
cd boost_1_85_0
echo "using gcc :  : x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ ;" > user-config.jam
./bootstrap.sh
./b2 --user-config=./user-config.jam --build-type=minimal --with-regex --prefix=$HOME/prefix install

Compile FileZilla

cd ~/src
svn co https://svn.filezilla-project.org/svn/FileZilla3/tags/3.56.0/ fz
cd fz
autoreconf -i
./configure --host=$TARGET_HOST --prefix="$HOME/prefix" --enable-shared --disable-static --with-pugixml=builtin
make
# strip debug symbols
$TARGET_HOST-strip src/interface/.libs/filezilla.exe
$TARGET_HOST-strip src/putty/.libs/fzsftp.exe
$TARGET_HOST-strip src/putty/.libs/fzputtygen.exe
$TARGET_HOST-strip src/fzshellext/64/.libs/libfzshellext-0.dll
$TARGET_HOST-strip src/fzshellext/32/.libs/libfzshellext-0.dll
$TARGET_HOST-strip data/dlls_gui/*.dll
cd data
wine "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/NSIS/makensis.exe" install.nsi

Voila, there's now FileZilla_3_setup.exe in the current directory.