Re: Fwd: Plans for GTK+ Bundles for win32 and win64?

[Kalev Lember <kalevlember gmail com>]

On 09/08/2011 09:34 AM, Anders Broman wrote:
> Hi,
> Has the provision of binary bundles for Windows 32 bit and 64 bit been
> discontinued?

Others have already replied about the situation with the official binary
bundle, but here's an alternative.

There's also the option to go with cross-compiling from Linux. There are
at least two separate efforts which use the gcc cross-compiler to
produce ready-made binary Windows libraries, including the full GTK+
stack.

In early 2009, Richard W.M. Jones started the Fedora MinGW project [1]
which uses the mingw.org [2] runtime / libraries / headers. The idea was
that there was too much fragmentation and duplication of work because at
that time pretty much everybody had to build their own set of libraries;
the Fedora MinGW project would make it easier by distributing binary
library packages that everybody could reuse and contribute back to.

On a Fedora system, it can't be simpler to use:
yum install mingw32-gcc mingw32-gtk3
unpack your app and cd in the dir
mingw32-configure
make -j4
profit.

About half a year later, the openSUSE guys led by Fridrich Strba forked
the Fedora MinGW project and started with a separate effort using the
OBS [3]. The openSUSE MinGW project however didn't go with the mingw.org
runtime, but instead started using the mingw-w64 [4] runtime. The
main advantage over the mingw.org was that with mingw-w64, it's possible
to produce both 32 bit and 64 bit binaries, whereas the mingw.org one is
limited to 32 bit.

Both Fedora and openSUSE MinGW cross-compilers are very easy to use from
the respective Linux flavours, but there were parties who wanted to
reuse the produced binary library packages on other systems. Maarten
Bosmans came up with a script to Python script [5] to download the RPMS
and extract the libraries, without the need to use neither Fedora nor
openSUSE. Also works on Windows.
$ ./download-mingw-rpm.py -u http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/rawhide/x86_64/os/ mingw32-gtk3 [Fedora]
$ ./download-mingw-rpm.py --project=windows:mingw:win32 mingw32-gtk3 [openSUSE]

With that script, one can extract the full GTK+ bundle. If compatibility
with the mingw.org toolchain and/or the official gtk.org mingw binaries
is desired, it's probably better to go with the Fedora MinGW binaries;
for producing 64 bit binaries and/or compatibility with the mingw-w64
toolchain the openSUSE project might be better choice.

References:
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW
[2] http://www.mingw.org/
[3] https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=windows%3Amingw
[4] http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/
[5] http://www.bosmans.ch/pulseaudio/download-mingw-rpm.py

Hope this helps,
Kalev