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+Building the Thrift IDL compiler in Windows
+-------------------------------------------
+
+The Visual Studio project contains pre-build commands to generate the 
+thriftl.cc, thrifty.cc and thrifty.h files which are necessary to build 
+the compiler. These depend on bison, flex and their dependencies to
+work properly. If this doesn't work on a system, try these manual
+pre-build steps.
+
+Open compiler.sln and remove the Pre-build commands under the project's
+ Properties -> Build Events -> Pre-Build Events.
+
+Download flex & bison from http://jaisantonyk.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/lex-and-yaccbison-in-windows/
+Download bison.simple in addition to bison.exe . This build of bison is easier to use
+than the one on sourceforge which has a myriad of dependencies.
+Place these binaries somewhere in the path.
+
+From a command prompt:
+> cd thrift/compiler/cpp
+> flex -osrc\thriftl.cc src\thriftl.ll
+In the generated thriftl.cc, comment out #include <unistd.h>
+
+Place a copy of bison.simple in thrift/compiler/cpp
+> bison -y -o "src/thrifty.cc" --defines src/thrifty.yy
+> move src\thrifty.cc.h  src\thrifty.h
+
+Download inttypes.h from the interwebs and place it in an include path 
+location (e.g. thrift/compiler/cpp/src).
+
+Build the compiler in Visual Studio.