Guide for compiling VirtualBox 4.3 and 5.2

blueclouds8666 · Unread post by **blueclouds8666** » 18 Aug 2023, 14:12

I have recently been investigating how to compile VirtualBox versions 4.3.12 and 5.2.34 on Windows, only to realize that the documentation is very incomplete and that many issues will prevent you from doing it successfully. It took me a long time, but i eventually got it working. Given the unnecessary and tedious complexities, i thought it was a good idea to document my findings and share them with the rest of you, so it is humanly possible to compile these two versions. I have published the necessary tools, libraries and instructions on my website so you can grab them conveniently from there.

http://neonfloppy.sytes.net/resources/compiling/

YouTube · Unread post by **K4sum1** » 18 Aug 2023, 14:33

You could fix the issues with later 5.2.x builds, and compile a fixed 5.2.40 or whatever without hardening and maybe the 4.x UI as well. Would be best VirtualBox.

blueclouds8666 · Unread post by **blueclouds8666** » 18 Aug 2023, 16:00

I did try to compile versions newer than 5.2.34, but something was changed with the building system which breaks certain undocumented routines. While I could try to figure that out, I'm not sure it would be worth the time. It's worth mentioning that 5.2.36 broke machine additions for Windows Vista guest systems and also changed the Python version, which could be even more problematic.

I think it would be a better idea to backport the necessary features from 5.2.44 and 6.x to this version. I'm not aware of any bug or issue specific to 5.2.34, but if any is found, i will give a look into it.

luk3Z · Unread post by **luk3Z** » 20 Aug 2023, 14:41

blueclouds8666 wrote: ↑18 Aug 2023, 14:12 (...)

http://neonfloppy.sytes.net/resources/compiling/

Thanks. Great site.

YouTube · Unread post by **K4sum1** » 23 Aug 2023, 13:52

Could you move all the extension pack features into VirtualBox itself?

blueclouds8666 · Unread post by **blueclouds8666** » 25 Aug 2023, 22:05

K4sum1 wrote: ↑23 Aug 2023, 13:52 Could you move all the extension pack features into VirtualBox itself?

The extension pack is entirely closed source, anything i could do with it is include the .vbox-extpack file into the final installer, but besides that, there is not much else i could do. in any case, installing the extension pack is only a few clicks, so i'm not sure how practical would be to have it included.

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