[Privoxy-users] Compiling Privoxy under Windows using Cygwin

[Lee]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2026 at 5:36 AM 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.
>

Right.  Staying with Microsoft Windows was like staying in an abusive
relationship.  My O/S serving me ads was an absolutely no f***ing way, so..
bye bye M$


> 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
>

oops.  'setup-x86_64 ... pcre2,mbedtls,brotli' gets you the cygwin version
of those libraries.  You need the cross-compiled mingw versions to build a
"native" app which is the reason for all that
  ... build the static PCRE libraries with
  ... If you want to be able to have Privoxy do TLS Inspection, ... build
the static libraries with
stuph under the Windows 2.2.1.1 Setup section

Then update the windows/MYconfigure script to reference the libraries you
just built.

I built everything in /source which is why you'll see stuff like
    inc="/source/pcre2-10.47/src/"
in the script.  Adjust according to where you built the libraries


> So actually all needed packages are available on Cygwin that we might need
> now.
>

I don't know about now, but when I was building Privoxy the mingw library
versions for pcre2, mbed-tls and brotli libraries didn't exist.

>
> 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.
>

Because you are using a mingw cross compiler it wants a mingw built pcre2
library.  Cygwin libraries aren't going to do you any good when building
software with the mingw cross-compilers

Maybe someone could help me here.
>
> Here is the full output:
>
> $ ./windows/MYconfigure && make
>
      <.. snip ..>

> configure: error: Failed to detect pcre2 library.
>

Follow the instructions for building the 10.x prce2 code, update
the windows/MYconfigure script with the directory where you build the
library  and you'll probably get past that  error..

Then do the same for the mbed-tls and brotli libraries and the build script
should work..

Regards
Lee

>