What is Notepad++ ?

    

Notepad++ is a free (free as in both "free speech" and "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several programming languages and natural languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

To build Notepad++ from source:

There are two components that need to be built separately:

• notepad++.exe: (depends on SciLexer.dll)
• SciLexer.dll : (with nmake)

You can build Notepad++ with or without Boost - The release build of Notepad++ is built with Boost.

Since Notepad++ version 6.0, the build of SciLexer.dll that is distributed uses features from Boost's Boost.Regex library.

You can build SciLexer.dll without Boost, ie. with its default POSIX regular expression support instead of boost's PCRE one. This is useful if you would like to debug Notepad++, but don't have boost.

To build notepad++.exe:

1. Open PowerEditor\visual.net\notepadPlus.vcproj
2. Build Notepad++ like a normal Visual Studio project.

To build SciLexer.dll with boost:

Here are the instructions to build SciLexer.dll for Notepad++:

1. Download the Boost source code. v1.55 should be used with VS 2013. Then unzip it. In my case, boost_1_55_0 is copied in C:\sources\
2. Go to scintilla\boostregex\ then run BuildBoost.bat with your boost path. In my case: BuildBoost.bat C:\sources\boost_1_55_0
3. Go in scintilla\win32\ then run nmake -f scintilla.mak

To build SciLexer.dll without boost:

This will work with notepad++.exe, however some functionality in Notepad++ might be broken.

To build SciLexer.dll without PCRE support:

1. Open a command prompt for building (a.k.a. the Developer Command Prompt for VS2013)

   • From the IDE, you can do this by right clicking on a file in Solution Explorer, and clicking "Open Command Prompt". This will open up a command prompt with all the proper environment variables.
   • From the Windows Start screen/menu, type Developer Command Prompt for VS2013, and click/select the result.
   • From an already open command prompt, run vcvarsall.bat (e.g. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat").

2. Change directory (cd or pushd) to scintilla\win32\

3. Build SciLexer.dll with one of the following commands:

   • nmake NOBOOST=1 -f scintilla.mak (normal build)
   • nmake NOBOOST=1 DEBUG=1 -f scintilla.mak (debugging build)

4. Copy SciLexer.dll from scintilla\bin\ to the same directory as notepad++.exe.

   • For the Unicode Release configuration, the output directory (where notepad++.exe is) is PowerEditor\bin\.
   • For the Unicode Debug configuration, the output directory (where notepad++.exe is) is PowerEditor\visual.net\Unicode Debug\.

See the Notepad++ official site for more information.

Notepad++ Contributors