Understanding wxWidgets Build Scheme

The build process of the wxWidgets library involves many configuration options. Before building the library, it is worth understanding the basics of what these are.

The build scheme is subdivided into 3 main components:

Build configurations	These are pre-configured settings for building wxWidgets in various modes; for example, Debug or Release. With rare exceptions, you will need to know what these few mode are when compiling wxWidgets.
Libraries	wxWidgets is essentially a collection of a few libraries. For example, wxtiff adds support for TIFF graphic files; if your application won't use these you might prefer not to build this library (which could result in a smaller application size).
setup.h	Refers to the header file which defines all of the configurable settings that will be, or were already used to build wxWidgets. Before building the library, you might edit this file in order to choose whether or not to include certain components (or classes) of the library. For example, if your application makes no use of the wxTimer class, you can ask for it not to be compiled (which would result in a smaller application size). After building the library, a copy of this file is used by your application to determine the configurable settings of wxWidgets.

The following screenshot illustrates the three build components under Microsoft Visual C++: