Introduction

First you need to download the ShutdownGuard source code, instructions here.

Compiler

I use mingw-w64 to build ShutdownGuard. Contrary to its name, there is also a 32-bit compiler available. You need the 32-bit toolchain to build 32-bit binaries, and the 64-bit toolchain to build 64-bit binaries. So if you want to build for both 32-bit and 64-bit, you will need to get both toolchains.

The mingw-w64 file download section is a mess, so to find the files you want, search for the prefix mingw-w32-1.0-bin_i686-mingw to get the correct 32-bit download and mingw-w64-1.0-bin_i686-mingw for the 64-bit download.

It doesn't matter where you extract them, but I usually use C:\mingw-w32 and C:\mingw-w64.

I previously used the normal MinGW to build ShutdownGuard, but moved from it because they never update it anymore. Note that you should still be able to build ShutdownGuard with it, but you must modify build.bat. You do need mingw-w64 if you want to compile 64-bit binaries.

Note that the mingw-w32 and mingw-w64 toolchains have prefixed binaries, e.g. the name of gcc for mingw-w32 is i686-w64-mingw32-gcc and for mingw-w64 is x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc. The normal MinGW binaries does not have any prefixes. This means that you can have MinGW, mingw-w32 and mingw-w64 installed and all three in PATH without any conflicts. It does make it a bit annoying to type manually though, but I have a build script that will make it easier.

Configure PATH

After downloading the compilers, you need to add them to the PATH variable so the build script can use the them. Do this by right clicking on the Computer desktop icon, go to the Advanced tab, press the Environment variables button, locate the PATH variable and add <mingw path>\bin to the list, and press ok on all the dialogs. If you want to build both 32-bit and 64-bit, add both to PATH.

Here is an example of my PATH variable: C:\mingw-w32\bin;C:\mingw-w64\bin

If you had the terminal open when you changed the PATH variable, you must restart it.

Build it

Now everything should hopefully work when you run build.bat. It's more comfortable to run it in a terminal so you can see all the output. You can also run build run to automatically run ShutdownGuard after it has been built. To build the 64-bit binary run build x64.

Installer

If you want to build the installer you need NSIS (or NSIS Unicode). Put it in PATH as well.

To build the installer you need to run build all. If you want to build and include the 64-bit binary then you need to run build all x64. Note that this will also try to build the 32-bit version, and will fail if that doesn't compile. The installer will bundle both the 32-bit and 64-bit binary and install the appropriate file during install. The installer will always be a 32-bit binary.

ShutdownPatcher

To build ShutdownPatcher, simply repeat the instructions above, but in the patcher directory.

Video walkthrough

If you don't get it working, it might help to watch this video. In it I explain how to compile another program of mine, SuperF4. These instructions should work just as well with ShutdownGuard.

Add a comment if you need help.