[Privoxy-users] Compiling Privoxy under Windows using Cygwin

[Ian Silvester]

Hi Simon,

Privoxy compilation depends upon the pcre2 library, so you'll need to download, build and install that first: https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2

HTH,

Ian


On Tue, 8 Sep 2026, at 01:36, Eigeldinger Simon via Privoxy-users wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just found out about Privoxy.
> I contacted Fabian before because Mailman had issues subscribing me.
> While i was looking at the website for Privoxy I saw that there was no 
> 4.2.0 version for Windows.
> Fabian told me that the person who compiled the Windows version 
> switched over to linux.
> So I looked at the documentation for compiling the code under Cygwin.
>
> First i downloaded the Cygwin setup and ran this command to install the 
> packages:
>
> setup-x86_64 -P 
> autoconf,automake,binutils,gcc-core,cmake,gcc-g++,git,make,mingw64-i686-gcc-core,mingw64-i686-zlib,vim,libxslt,curl,openssh,docbook-dssl,docbook-sgml31,docbook-utils,openjade,gnupg,w3m,libtidy5,pcre2,mbedtls,brotli
>
> So actually all needed packages are available on Cygwin that we might need now.
>
> Then i tried to compile Privoxy 4.2.0 using this command.
> It seems that the config seems not to find the already installed pcre2 package.
> Maybe someone could help me here.
>
> Here is the full output:
>
> $ ./windows/MYconfigure && make
>
> CFLAGS=-O2 -fdiagnostics-color=always -fstack-protector-strong 
> -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 -Wall -Wextra -Wno-missing-field-initializers 
> -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-type-limits -Wno-unused-parameter 
> -Wno-unused-but-set-variable -Wno-deprecated-declarations -Wformat=2 
> -Wlogical-op -Wshadow CPPFLAGS= -I/source/pcre2-10.47/src/ 
> -I/source/mbedtls-3.6.5/include 
> -I/source/brotli-1.2.0/build/installed/include -I/source/zstd-1.5.7/lib 
> LDFLAGS= -fstack-protector-strong -Wl,--nxcompat 
> -Wl,--dynamicbase,--export-all-symbols -L/source/pcre2-10.47/.libs 
> -L/source/mbedtls-3.6.5/library 
> -L/source/brotli-1.2.0/build/installed/lib -L/source/zstd-1.5.7/lib 
> checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-cygwin checking host 
> system type... i686-w64-mingw32 checking for i686-w64-mingw32-gcc... 
> i686-w64-mingw32-gcc checking whether the C compiler works... yes 
> checking for C compiler default output file name... a.exe checking for 
> suffix of executables... .exe checking whether we are cross 
> compiling... no checking for suf
>  fix of object files... o checking whether the compiler supports GNU 
> C... yes checking whether i686-w64-mingw32-gcc accepts -g... yes 
> checking for i686-w64-mingw32-gcc option to enable C23 features... 
> -std=gnu23 checking how to run the C preprocessor... 
> i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -std=gnu23 -E checking for a BSD-compatible 
> install... /usr/bin/install -c checking whether ln -s works... yes 
> checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes checking for gawk... gawk 
> checking for gdb... no checking for groups... /usr/bin/groups checking 
> for id... /usr/bin/id
> configure: WARNING: There is no user 'privoxy' on this system checking 
> for user... none specified checking for group... none specified Using 
> mingw32 (Win32 GUI) checking for w3m... w3m checking for db2html... no 
> checking for docbook2html... docbook2html checking for openjade... 
> openjade checking for onsgmls... onsgmls checking for man2html... no 
> checking for /usr/share/sgml/docbook/dsssl-stylesheets... yes checking 
> for /usr/share/sgml/CATALOG.docbk30... no checking for 
> /usr/share/sgml/CATALOG.docbk31... no checking for 
> /usr/share/sgml/CATALOG.docbk31... no checking for 
> /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook/2.4.1/docbook.cat... no checking for 
> /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook/3.0/docbook.cat... no checking for 
> /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook/3.1/docbook.cat... no checking for 
> /usr/share/sgml/docbook/dtd/3.1/docbook.cat... no checking for 
> stdio.h... yes checking for stdlib.h... yes checking for string.h... 
> yes checking for inttypes.h... yes checking for stdint.h... yes 
> checking for strings.h... yes
>   checking for sys/stat.h... yes checking for sys/types.h... yes 
> checking for unistd.h... yes checking for sys/time.h... yes checking 
> for pthread.h... yes Using native threads checking for gethostbyname in 
> -lnsl... no checking for gethostbyaddr_r... no no checking for 
> gethostbyname_r... no no checking for gmtime_r... no no checking for 
> localtime_r... no no checking for grep that handles long lines and 
> -e... /usr/bin/grep checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E checking for 
> dirent.h that defines DIR... yes checking for library containing 
> opendir... none required checking for an ANSI C-conforming const... yes 
> checking for size_t... yes checking for pid_t... yes checking whether 
> struct tm is in sys/time.h or time.h... time.h checking size of int... 
> 4 checking size of char *... 4 checking size of long... 4 checking size 
> of long long... 8 checking size of size_t... 4 checking size of 
> time_t... 4 checking for OS.h... no checking for arpa/inet.h... no 
> checking for errno.h... yes checking for
>   fcntl.h... yes checking for limits.h... yes checking for locale.h... 
> yes checking for netdb.h... no checking for netinet/in.h... no checking 
> for stddef.h... yes checking for stdlib.h... (cached) yes checking for 
> string.h... (cached) yes checking for sys/ioctl.h... no checking for 
> sys/socket.h... no checking for sys/time.h... (cached) yes checking for 
> sys/timeb.h... yes checking for sys/wait.h... no checking for 
> unistd.h... (cached) yes checking return type of signal handlers... 
> void checking for access... yes checking for arc4random... no checking 
> for atexit... yes checking for calloc... yes checking for getcwd... yes 
> checking for gethostbyaddr... no checking for gethostbyaddr_r... 
> (cached) no checking for gethostbyname... no checking for 
> gethostbyname_r... (cached) no checking for gettimeofday... yes 
> checking for inet_ntoa... no checking for memchr... yes checking for 
> memmove... yes checking for memset... yes checking for nanosleep... yes 
> checking for poll... no checking for puten
>  v... yes checking for random... no checking for regcomp... no checking 
> for select... no checking for setlocale... yes checking for shutdown... 
> no checking for snprintf... yes checking for socket... no checking for 
> strchr... yes checking for strdup... yes checking for strerror... yes 
> checking for strftime... yes checking for strlcat... no checking for 
> strlcpy... no checking for strptime... no checking for strtoul... yes 
> checking for timegm... no checking for tzset... yes checking for main 
> in -lws2_32... yes checking getaddrinfo in ws2_32... yes checking 
> getnameinfo in ws2_32... yes checking for pcre2_compile_8 in 
> -lpcre2-8... no checking for regcomp in -lpcre2-posix... no Enabling 
> support for client-specific tags.
> checking for zlibVersion in -lz... yes
> Enabling compression support.
> configure: error: Failed to detect pcre2 library.
>
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