After building VIPS (see Build on windows for notes on building on windows with MinGW), you need to package it for distribution. I usually just make a zip of all the files and leave building installers to someone else (Denis Pitzalis has made several Windows installers).

Install the GTK+ runtime from the gimp-win project. I installed gtk+-2.10.13-setup.exe, there might be something better now.

Install to the default path (C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0). You could optionally turn off the windows native theme and the localisations and save a bit of space.

Take a copy of the runtime to the area you're going to use to build the nip distribution:

cd mkdir dist cd dist cp -r /c/Program\ Files/Common\ Files/GTK/2.0/ nip2-7.10.14 

Copy in the extra bits you need for nip:

cp /usr/local/bin/nip2.exe bin
cp /usr/local/bin/vips.exe bin
cp /usr/local/bin/liblcms-1.dll bin
cp /usr/local/bin/libexif-12.dll bin
cp /usr/local/bin/libgsl* bin
cp /usr/local/bin/batch_* bin
cp /usr/local/bin/light_correct bin
cp /usr/local/bin/shrink_width bin
cp -r /usr/local/share/nip2/ share
cp -r /usr/local/share/vips/ share
mkdir share/doc
cp -r /usr/local/share/doc/nip2/ share/doc
cp -r /usr/local/share/doc/vips/ share/doc
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/AUTHORS .
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/ChangeLog .
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/NEWS .
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/TODO .
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/README .
cp ~/packages/vips/nip2-7.10.14/THANKS .

You can probably remove the PDF docs from the share area.

rm -rf share/doc/nip2/pdf rm -rf share/doc/vips/pdf rm -rf share/vips

And you can strip the vips and nip binaries and save a megabyte or so.

strip bin/*.exe

That's it!