OpenSlide on Windows

Getting OpenSlide for Windows

Precompiled binaries

Regular releases are available from the OpenSlide website. Nightly development builds are also available.

Building from source

OpenSlide is built for Windows using MinGW-w64. The easiest way to build OpenSlide and its dependencies is by using the openslide-winbuild script, which can run on Linux or natively on Windows via Cygwin.

Python

OpenSlide Python is not included in the OpenSlide binary distributions, but prebuilt wheels are available on PyPI. Install with pip install openslide-python and make sure OpenSlide is in the DLL search path.

Using OpenSlide on Windows

Crashes when linked with MSVC 2010 (VC10) or earlier

With VC10 and earlier, you will see crashes at runtime if you link with /OPT:REF, which is the default in release builds. Link with /OPT:NOREF or regenerate the import library using the MSVC toolchain.

Optional components

If you distribute a program that uses OpenSlide, you may wish to omit these utility programs:

These binaries are only necessary if you use OpenSlide Java:

Files with names ending in .debug contain debug symbols for GDB, and can also be omitted.

Licensing

If you distribute OpenSlide binaries, you are also required to distribute the corresponding source code for OpenSlide and some of its dependencies. The exact license terms for each component are included in the licenses directory of OpenSlide binary distributions. Complete corresponding sources for official builds and nightlies are distributed in the -winbuild Zip file alongside the binary Zips.