Re: What about official GTK+ installer for win32?

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

> Tomasz Jankowski writes:
> > I want to make installer for my program and I'm not sure if adding copy of
> > GTK+ libraries to it will be a good idea.
>
> Yes, it is.
>
> I think experience has shown that it is futile to try to use a 
> single common GTK+ installation on Windows for all applications. 
> One of the reasons for this is that, despite the best efforts of 
> maintainers, the fact is that diferent versions of GLib, Pango 
> and GTK+ for Windows can and do differ in details in how various 
> functionality is implemented...

I agree with Tor on this (chiming in as author/maintainer of a 
GTK-based program that has a Windows version).

Sometimes I am _almost_ inclined to see this as a plus. If you 
distribute the GTK runtime with your program, you know exactly 
what's available in terms of API.  If you're distributing a GTK 
program for Linux -- depending on a common, shared set of GTK 
libraries -- you have to program defensively, trying to ensure 
that your application will work correctly with the lowest common 
denominator of (acceptable) GTK installations.

Allin Cottrell