Building ICU libaries

ICU Upgrade steps

• Download the latest source code(not binary) from the ICU repo from http://site.icu-project.org/download (Choose the latest ICU4C Release)

• Do the above step for Unix (MAC and Linux) and Windows

• Windows:

  • Extract the downloaded source code and go to icu\source\allinone directory
  • There would be a solution file named allinone.sln. Open this file in the latest Visual Studio (>=VS2015)
  • Change the build configuration to Release and Platform to Win32 in Visual Studio as we currently support 32 bit brackets only.
  • Once it is built, folders named icu\bin, icu\lib and icu\include would be created. These will contain all the *.dll files, lib files and header files respectively, which we will be using in Brackets for Dynamic Linking.
  • Currently we only use icuuc58.dll, icuin58.dll and icudt58.dll as dlls, icuin.lib and icuuc.lib as lib files, and we use the complete include folder.
  • Please note that these files might change as we update since ICU may change the functionality of these dlls, we might need to add/remove some dlls, but all the dlls would be present in icu\bin, icu\lib and icu\include directories only.
  • Now we once we have our updated dlls we have to put those updated dlls in S3 so that while building brackets-shell we fetch the latest executables.
  • Upload it to files.brackets.io/icu in S3. Please follow the same format which is being currently used.
  • Also if there are some changes in the dll (some are removed/renamed/added), then we have to update the linking step in the brackets-shell as well. Update the dll names in the Gruntfile.js and appshell.gyp.

• MAC and Linux

  • Extract the downloaded source code and go to icu/source directory
  • From Terminal run ./runConfigureICU MacOSX --enable-static --disable-shared in case of MAC and ./runConfigureICU Linux --enable-static --disable-shared in case of Linux to set configuration.
  • Run make to build the binaries from the source code.
  • Once it is built, folders named icu/source/lib would be created. These will contain all the *.a files and header files which we will be using in Brackets for Static Linking.
  • We need to get the include folder from the Windows build. We will upload both the lib and include folder to S3.
  • Currently we only use libicuuc.a, libicui18n.a and libicudata.a as lib files and we use the complete include folder.
  • Please note that these files might change as we update since ICU may change the functionality of these libs, we might need to add/remove some libs, but all the lib files would be present in that icu/source/lib directory only.
  • Now we once we have our updated lib files we have to put those updated libs in S3 so that while building brackets-shell we fetch the latest executables.
  • Upload it to files.brackets.io/icu in S3. Please follow the same format which is being currently used.
  • Also if there are some changes in the lib (some are removed/renamed/added), then we have to update the linking step in the brackets-shell as well. Update the lib names in the Gruntfile.js and appshell.gyp.