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: The VC++ 6 workspace file (expat.dsw) and project files (.dsp) can be opened and imported in VS.NET without problems. * 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++. 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.