How do I install primer3 on windows? - windows

Question

Problem:
I need to install Primer3, a widely used bio tool that finds allows one to design primers.
Attempts at resolution:
I have attempted to follow their instructions for a Windows installation to no avail as it does not seem provide enough information. I not a experienced programmer by any means. So far I've also referenced this stack overflow post about a similar issue and tried to follow the suggested answer. I also briefly looked at a thread in their github repository, though I can't really understand what they are saying in it. Nothing seems to work so far as the output I get from my command terminal (the mingw32 version) is this:
C:\Users\mqian\Desktop\CGIProject\primer3-2.4.0\primer3-2.4.0\test>mingw32-make
TESTOPTS=--windows
cd ..\src & mingw32-make
mingw32-make[1]: Entering directory 'C:/Users/mqian/Desktop/CGIProject/primer3-2
.4.0/primer3-2.4.0/src'
g++ -c -g -Wall -D__USE_FIXED_PROTOTYPES__ -O2 masker.c
masker.c:8:22: fatal error: sys/mman.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
Makefile:226: recipe for target 'masker.o' failed
mingw32-make[1]: *** [masker.o] Error 1
mingw32-make[1]: Leaving directory 'C:/Users/mqian/Desktop/CGIProject/primer3-2.
4.0/primer3-2.4.0/src'
Makefile:94: recipe for target 'makeexes' failed
mingw32-make: *** [makeexes] Error 2
and if I just try to run a make in the src folder:
C:\Users\mqian\Desktop\CGIProject\primer3-2.4.0\primer3-2.4.0\src>mingw32-make
g++ -c -g -Wall -D__USE_FIXED_PROTOTYPES__ -O2 masker.c
masker.c:8:22: fatal error: sys/mman.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
Makefile:226: recipe for target 'masker.o' failed
mingw32-make: *** [masker.o] Error 1
Is it something that I missing in terms of a software or package needed? Is their makefile bugged? Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. here is a link to their download site on sourceforge. I am using version 2.4.0.

Answer 1

I was able to build it like this on Windows (replace /usr/local with the path where you want to install):
Build mman-win32 from https://github.com/witwall/mman-win32/releases under MSYS2 using:
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --cc=gcc --enable-static --enable-shared &&
make &&
mkdir -p /usr/local/include/mman-win32/sys /usr/local/lib &&
cp -f *.h /usr/local/include/mman-win32/sys/ &&
cp -f *.a /usr/local/lib/ &&
echo Success
Then build primer3 from https://github.com/primer3-org/primer3/releases:
mv src/masker.c src/masker.c.bak
cat > src/masker.c << EOF
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#define GETLINE_BUFLEN 128
static ssize_t getline(char** lineptr, size_t* n, FILE* stream)
{
char* bufptr;
char* p;
ssize_t size;
int c;
if (!lineptr || !n || !stream)
return -1;
bufptr = *lineptr;
size = *n;
c = fgetc(stream);
if (c == EOF)
return -1;
if (!bufptr) {
if ((bufptr = (char*)malloc(GETLINE_BUFLEN)) == NULL)
return -1;
size = GETLINE_BUFLEN;
}
p = bufptr;
while (c != EOF) {
if ((p - bufptr) > (size - 1)) {
size = size + GETLINE_BUFLEN;
if ((bufptr = (char*)realloc(bufptr, size)) == NULL)
return -1;
}
*p++ = c;
if (c == '\n') {
break;
}
c = fgetc(stream);
}
*p++ = 0;
*lineptr = bufptr;
*n = size;
return p - bufptr - 1;
}
EOF
cat src/masker.c.bak >> src/masker.c
make -Csrc install PREFIX=/usr/local CC_OPTS="-I/usr/local/include/mman-win32" LDLIBS="-Wl,--as-needed -lmman" &&
echo Success