Expat can be built on Windows in three ways: 

  using MS Visual C++ (6.0 or .NET), Borland C++ Builder 5 or Cygwin.

* Cygwin:

  This follows the Unix build procedures.

* C++ Builder 5:

  Possible with make files in the BCB5 subdirectory.

  Details can be found in the ReadMe file located there.

* MS Visual C++ 6:

  Based on the workspace file expat.dsw. The related project

  files (.dsp) are located in the lib subdirectory.

* MS Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, 2005:

  The VC++ 6 workspace file (expat.dsw) and project files (.dsp)

  can be opened and imported in VS.NET without problems.

* Creating MinGW dynamic libraries from MS VC++ DLLs:

  On the command line, execute these steps:

  pexports libexpat.dll > expat.def

  pexports libexpatw.dll > expatw.def

  dlltool -d expat.def -l libexpat.a

  dlltool -d expatw.def -l libexpatw.a

  The *.a files are mingw libraries.

* Special note about MS VC++ and runtime libraries:

  There are three possible configurations: using the

  single threaded or multithreaded run-time library,

  or using the multi-threaded run-time Dll. That is, 

  one can build three different Expat libraries depending

  on the needs of the application.

  Dynamic Linking:

  By default the Expat Dlls are built to link statically

  with the multi-threaded run-time library. 

  The libraries are named

  - libexpat(w).dll 

  - libexpat(w).lib (import library)

  The "w" indicates the UTF-16 version of the library.

  One rarely uses other versions of the Dll, but they can

  be built easily by specifying a different RTL linkage in

  the IDE on the C/C++ tab under the category Code Generation.

  Static Linking:

  The libraries should be named like this:

  Single-theaded:     libexpat(w)ML.lib

  Multi-threaded:     libexpat(w)MT.lib

  Multi-threaded Dll: libexpat(w)MD.lib

  The suffixes conform to the compiler switch settings

  /ML, /MT and /MD for MS VC++.

  Note: In Visual Studio 2005 (Visual C++ 8.0) and later, the

  single-threaded runtime library is not supported anymore.

  By default, the expat-static and expatw-static projects are set up

  to link statically against the multithreaded run-time library,

  so they will build libexpatMT.lib or libexpatwMT.lib files.

  To build the other versions of the static library, 

  go to Project - Settings:

  - specify a different RTL linkage on the C/C++ tab

    under the category Code Generation.

  - then, on the Library tab, change the output file name

    accordingly, as described above

  An application linking to the static libraries must

  have the global macro XML_STATIC defined.