Build less under Windows

This describes how to build less under Windows. It uses CMake, a modern build tool rather than the provided Makefile:s.

Downloading less

Download a suitable version from http://www.greenwoodsoftware.com/less

Build

• Unpack the archive. This will create a subdirectory names less-NNN, where NNN corresponds to the selected version, for example NNN-471.

• Copy defines.wn to defines.h

• Create a file named CMakeLists.txt with the following content:

set(SOURCES
  main.c screen.c brac.c ch.c charset.c cmdbuf.c
  command.c cvt.c decode.c edit.c filename.c forwback.c
  help.c ifile.c input.c jump.c line.c linenum.c
  lsystem.c mark.c optfunc.c option.c opttbl.c os.c
  output.c pattern.c position.c prompt.c search.c signal.c
  tags.c  ttyin.c version.c regexp.c)

include_directories(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR})

add_executable(less ${SOURCES})

• Create a new directory, and move there. For example build parallel with the source directory.

mkdir build
cd build

• Create build projects:

cmake ..\less-471

• Build

cmake --build . --config Release

• Copy the resulting binary somewhere in your path:

copy Release\less.exe SOMEWHERE