The (environment) path of mingw/msys, not your windows environment.

How do I change that?

Hmm, just one minor thing: Try the 32-bit SDL files (e.g. DLLs). These are required for a proper setup of DOSBox as a 32-bit executable. I have some feeling that DOSBox is currently not tested as a 64-bit executable for Windows.

you need the sources of SDL too, not just the binary. I'm not entirely sure why the guide does say the dll is enough - this is wrong as far as I can tell from my experiences with mingw/msys. The development libraries for mingw at http://www.libsdl.org/download-1.2.php might be enough though.

Second, where do the .diff files go when compiling with custom patches?

it's not important where the diffs are located, you just need to know where they are so you can point the patch command at the diffs (diffs/patch files are just text files that tell the program patch which files to change or to make and what changes it needs to make to the original files).

Okay, I have downloaded and extracted the Win32 development libraries for MinGW, 32-bit. Now where do I put them and how do I tell MinGW and MSYS that they are available for ./configure?

put them in the msys folder, I think or the mingw if you have them seperate (I found them to be okay to be in one folder). Once you extracted the SDL devel stuff you will notice that it has the same folder structure as msys (/bin, /include, /lib...) so you know where to put the stuff 😀

This might help
http://legesmotus.endrift.com/index.php/Building_with_MinGW

I was having no luck and I was extremely frustrated, so I tried and I did it successfully using Visual C++ 2008 Express! The wiki here is excellent :

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Building_DOSBox_wi … _C_2008_Express

I followed the instructions exactly and it worked. However I will have to point out three things :

1. You can find the appropriate download here :
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/p … ditions/express

2. The first time I tried building the solution, I failed. Thanks to NY00123 I figured out why, SDL 1.2.15 has libs for x64 and x86, and once I indicated the x86 subdirectory in setting up the environment, it finished building successfully.

3. The resulting DOSBOX.EXE is to be found in dosbox\visualc_net subdirectory.

Now, I have built a clean SVN r3779 without the screenshot, Modem or IPX functionality and debug features.

Now to apply a patch...

Using the patch program in MinGW, I successfully patched the DOSBox SVN with the latest CGA composite color patch and it worked. The attached file does not need additional DLLs. It does seem like one may have better success compiling and patching when additional libraries are used with MinGW/MSYS.

Good that you finally managed to compile it 😉
But yes, a working msys/mingw environment is often much more useful if you want to compile more software that makes use of autotools (autogen, configure...)
At some point I will have to try and set this environment up myself and fix the wiki. Unfortunately when I was still using windows it always was time consuming and frustrating ;as you found out yourself 😉)

Dominus wrote:

you need the sources of SDL too, not just the binary. I'm not entirely sure why the guide does say the dll is enough - this is wrong as far as I can tell from my experiences with mingw/msys. The development libraries for mingw at http://www.libsdl.org/download-1.2.php might be enough though.

You are right, you need the header files...not just a binary dll.