Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] win32 build issues

[Michael Rickmann <mrickma gwdg de>]

Hello everybody,
I am new to this list and have been fighting the Windows compiling of Ekiga 
for a while. This morning I discovered the win32 packages at 
http://snapshots.gnomemeeting.net/win32/ . I will give them a try this 
weekend. Here are my experiences so far:

The directory layout can be simplyfied very much if you install The GIMP for 
Windows before building. Actually you only need the GTK+-runtime bin 
directory in your Windows %PATH% (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:
\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Programme\Gemeinsame Dateien\GTK\2.0\bin for a 
German Windows). This seems to emerge as a standard for GTK progs on Windows. 
Also Gaim uses this location. For building, only install the -dev zip-files 
into your ming32 or i686-pc-mingw32 tree. Then you should only need the files 
currently contained in ekiga-core.zip for running ekiga. Unfortunately the 
current ekiga.exe has a hardwired opinion where to find its dlls.
The runtime found at http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html also looks a 
bit nicer on an XP-box than the dlls in ekiga-shell.zip.

I tried to compile (still gnomemeeting) under MSys following the instructions 
in readme.mingw32. It took half an hour to link the Opal dll on a Windows box 
with 2GB of ram. I tested the program in a simple H.323 connection on the 
same subnet and it was usable but took 95% of a Xenon's performance. And I 
couldn't get my Philips webcam connected to the VFW interface of pwlib.

When crosscompiling on a Kubuntu breezy box I followed Julien Puydt's postings 
in last December with minor modifications. Ekiga compiled but crashed. It 
died silently when linked with ldap and with a proper Windows notification 
when linked against ldap_r. The culprit was the ptlib.dll. I could replace it 
with a MSys compiled and renamed one and Ekiga worked. I guess that my 
libtool was using the wrong switches when linking. They looked very much of 
Unix threads. Cross compiling pwlib following the redme.mingw32 recipe 
results in a usable ptlib.dll.

So my problems at the moment seem to focus around pwlib. Especially I cannot 
find a webcam which spits a color format that pwlib accepts for conversion on 
a XP box. I guess this is a general shortcome of the rather old Video for 
Windows API which does not allow for a proper enumeration of driver 
capabilities. DirectShow would be much nicer but its headers are very 
resistant against the GNU tools.

Regards
Michael Rickmann