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Installing EFL on Windows

The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) power millions of systems from mobile phones to set-top boxes, desktops, laptops, game systems and more. You'll need EFL if you want to develop apps for Enlightenment and for any of the devices that use Enlightenment for its visual interface.

This tutorial describes several ways to install EFL on your system. You will only need to use one of these. Select your chosen method using the index on the right.

Many distributions offer EFL as installable packages from their default repositories. In this case you only need to use your distribution's software management system to install. However, most versions of EFL in default repositories are out of date and will not compile more recent Enlightenment applications. If this is not an issue for you, read through the "From Distribution Repositories" section below.

The Enlightenment developers provide a pre-packaged source of EFL. Although not bleeding edge it is up to date and considered stable for production environments. You can download, compile and install it yourself by following the instructions in "Installing from Packaged Source".

You can also download the source code for the most recent version from the Enlightenment git repositories. To get started, read the section "Installing from Git".

From Distribution Repositories

Step 1: Installing Dependencies

You need to install the needed dependencies, which are usually not provided on Widows. The Ewpi project has an NSIS installer which provides them. You can download the lastest one in the Ewpi project, or in the EFL download repository.

Step 2: Installing the EFL

Once the dependencies have been installed, you can use the EFL installer either in the Ewpi project, or in the EFL download repository.

Installing from Git

You can also get the bleeding edge version of EFL by cloning it from the git repository. These steps will be done in the MSYS2 environment

Step 1: Installing MSYS2

  1. Install MSYS2 : https://www.msys2.org/ (steps 1 to 4)
  2. In the start menu, launch MSYS2 64bit --> MSYS2 MINGW64
  3. In the terminal, launch pacman -Syu, press Y to proceed the installation. Press Y to close the terminal
  4. In the start menu, launch again MSYS2 64bit --> MSYS2 MINGW64
  5. Run pacman -Syu base-devel autoconf automake libtool tar git wget python flex bison gettext-devel pkgconf make mingw-w64-x86_64-gperf mingw-w64-x86_64-nasm mingw-w64-x86_64-yasm mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-meson mingw-w64-x86_64-nsis
  6. When aksed for the selection, just press the Enter key for the default selection
  7. Press Y to proceed the installation This may take several minutes

Step 2: Installing the dependencies with Ewpi

  1. In the MSYS2 terminal, create a directory where tp clone Ewpi and enter it. For example: mkdir gitroot && cd gitroot
  2. Clone Ewpi repository: git clone https://github.com/vtorri/ewpi.git
  3. Enter the Ewpi repository: cd ewpi
  4. Build the ewpi tool: gcc -O2 -std=c99 -o ewpi ewpi.c ewpi_map.c
  5. run ./ewpi --jobs=8 (change the number of jobs to whatever you want).
  6. Launch the command again in MSYS2 if there is a problem with a file (it's an error with unix symlinks)
  7. The compilation and installation of the dependencies may take a lot of time (dozens of minutes)

This will install all the dependencies of the EFL in $HOME/ewpi_64

Step 3: Installing the EFL

  1. In the MSYS2 terminal, in a directory, clone the EFL directory : git clone https://git.enlightenment.org/enlightenment/efl.git
  2. Save the following script in the efldirectory :
#! /bin/bash
 
export EWPI_PATH=$HOME/ewpi_64
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$EWPI_PATH/lib/pkgconfig
export CPPFLAGS=-I$EWPI_PATH/include
export LDFLAGS=-L$EWPI_PATH/lib
 
rm -rf builddir
 
meson setup \
      --prefix=$HOME/efl_64 \
      --libdir=lib \
      --buildtype=release \
      --strip \
      --default-library shared \
      -Dsystemd=false \
      -Dpulseaudio=false \
      -Dv4l2=false \
      -Dlibmount=false \
      -Deeze=false \
      -Dx11=false \
      -Dxinput2=false \
      -Devas-loaders-disabler='pdf','ps','rsvg','json' \
      -Dopengl=none \
      -Dpixman=true \
      -Dembedded-lz4=false \
      -Dfribidi=true \
      -Dinput=false \
      -Dbuild-examples=false \
      -Dbuild-tests=false \
      -Dbindings='cxx' \
      -Dlua-interpreter=luajit \
      -Delua=true \
      builddir
 
ninja -C builddir install

Step 4: Carrying out Post Installation Tasks

You need to update the PATH environment variable in the MSYS2 terminal, or globally in Windows. With MSYS2:

export PATH=$HOME/ewpi_64/bin:$HOME/efl_64/bin:$PATH

Once done, you can test elementary_test

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems compiling and installing EFL, you can come and seek advice on any of our IRC channels or post a ticket to our Gitea.

Installing on Other Operating Systems

If you would like to install EFL on a different operating system visit the Installing EFL page.