Compiling and Running Squid on Windows

The following compilation procedure has been tested on MS Windows XP Professional using Squid 3.0 STABLE 16, MinGW 5.1.4 and MSYS 1.0.11.rc-1, ActivePerl 5.1.

Steps

1. Download MinGW and MSYS from http://www.mingw.org
2. Download Squid source code from http://www.squid-cache.org
3. Download the Perl installer from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/
4. Install MinGW under the directory c:\mingw
5. Install MSYS under the directory c:\msys. Indicate where mingw is located when prompted by MSYS.

6. Add the path to Windows for the following directories:

c:\msys\1.0\bin
c:\msys\1.0\mingw\bin
c:\msys\1.0\mingw\sbin
c:\mingw\bin


This is done by going to "Start->Settings->Control Panel->System icon->Advanced tab->Environment Variables button". Then under the "System Variables" grouping, Select the "Path" and choose "Edit" button. Add the above directories at the end by delimiting it with a semi-colon (;).

8. Unpack the Squid source code and copy it to the directory c:\msys\1.0\home\{username}\squid.

The source code is in tar.gz format. You can use the 7zip software from http://www.7-zip.org to unpack the source code.

9. At the MSYS terminal, go to the Squid source code directory and run the compile commands as follows:

$ cd /home/{username}/squid
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/squid --enable-win32-service
$ make all
$ make install

This will create the Squid binaries in the following directory c:\msys\1.0\local\squid

10. You can now copy the folder of Squid binaries to your desired location like "c:\squid" or create an installer package for your other machines.

The MinGW and MSYS software are not needed by Squid once you are able to create its binaries under Windows.

11. Assuming that you have relocated the Squid binaries to c:\squid, edit the squid.conf configuration file to reflect the relative references to the file locations under Windows.

12. Initialize the cache by issuing the command:

c:\squid\sbin> squid.exe -z

The will create the cache folders and files under c:\squid\var\cache


13. Start the Squid server by issuing the command:

c:\squid\sbin\squid -f c:\squid\etc\squid.conf

This will start Squid and will load the configuration file squid.conf under the directory c:\squid\etc.