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

[Sam Thursfield <ssssam gmail com>]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Dieter Verfaillie
<dieterv optionexplicit be> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sep 2011 14:18:41 +0100, Sam Thursfield wrote:
>> Let me first remind everyone that
>> https://live.gnome.org/Windows/Discussion has a good summary of all
>> things that are being discussed here. We're kind of heading in four
>> different directions at once (fedora-mingw, MSVC, native mingw, OBS)
>> so it's important we keep track :)
>
> Maybe it would be a good idea to stop insisting our
> beloved GNOME platform should only have 1 blessed set
> of binaries for Windows altogether and embrace the
> diversity that has been created. All these options
> are there for a reason. All of them. At the end of
> the day, Free Software development and GNOME are all
> about choice, right?

I agree with you here - and I haven't seen anyone insisting otherwise,
it's more a case of time to make it happen. Qt for example provides a
separate SDK for MSVC and for mingw. A specific MSVC version could be
targetted to allow use of the MSVCRT9.DLL. Although more effort is
needed to do this, it seems to be available, and it's probably a good
thing not to have the MSVC import libs generated by an uninterested
mingw developer or vice versa.

> So then it comes down to properly advertising and
> documenting the choices we have. Something along the
> lines of "What's the right option for my situation?" on
> live.gnome.org and www.gtk.org. Intended audience being
> application developers and packagers, off course.
>
> For example:
>
> - I can't or don't want to write a native windows port
>  for my application, but still want it to work on Windows:
>    > It must be your lucky day! Go have a look at Cygwin,
>      it provides a POSIX emulation layer on top of Windows.
>    > Best bet for support is <some place Cygwin related>
>    ! Note downsides here
>    == Happy customer :)
>
> - I want or have to use Visual Studio on Windows:
>    > Sure, here's how to build GTK+ with Visual Studio
>      Solution files.
>    > And here you can learn how to build your own applications
>      with Visual Studio.
>    > These binaries are linked against msvcrA.dll, for use
>      with Visual Studio B.
>    > And here's binaries that are linked against msvcrC.dll
>      for use with Vidual Studio D.
>    > Best bet for support is <???>
>    ! Make sure you are allowed to redistribute msvcr?.dll.
>      Consult <???> for more information.
>    ! Note other downsides here.
>    == Have a blast!
>
> - I don't have/want Visual Studio. gcc on windows?
>    > No problem. There's a complete Free toolchain
>      called MinGW that can function together with a
>      minimal POSIX emulation layer called MSYS.
>    > mingw-get update && mingw-get install gnome-sdk
>    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll
>      and can be used with mingw.org's compiler.
>    > These binaries come with gobject-introspection support
>      out of the box. Well, not yet, but real soon now ;)
>    > Best bet for support is <???>
>    ! Only works on Windows XP or newer.
>    ! Note other downsides here.
>    == Have fun!
>
> - Hey, I want to cross compile my stuff from Linux?
>    > Cool, have a look at OBS and this script that
>      automatically downloads everything you've ever
>      dreamed of.
>    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll and
>      can be used with mingw-w64's compilers
>    > Best bet for support is <???>
>    ! Note downsides here.
>    == Happy hacking!
>
>    > Or have a look at fedora-mingw
>    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll and
>      can be used with mingw.org's compilers (for now, but
>      there's a message somewhere about migrating to mingw-w64
>      whenever mingw-w64 has passed Redhat's legal audit).
>    > Best bet for support is <???>
>    ! Note downsides here.
>    == Happy hacking!
>
>    > Or have a look at (Debian's||Gentoo's||...) MinGW
>      environment:
>    > List specifics here
>    ...
>
> - All good and well, but I don't want to bundle a complete
>  and private set of dependencies of the GNOME platform?
>    > No problem. Here's how to use a shared version of
>      the platform.
>    > Linked against msvcr10, for use with Visual Studio
>      and the DDK.
>    > Best bet for support is <???>
>    ! Note downsides here.
>    = Good luck!
>
> What do you think? Can we try and collaborate on such a
> text on live.gnome.org and/or windows-devel-list or something?

I guess windows-devel-list is a good place :) My personal view is that
your list is daunting for a basic "how to use Gtk+" page - we should
just suggest mingw and MSVC. For more advanced systems like Cygwin we
don't need to provide binaries (Gtk+ should be available in their
package repositories) so the most we really need to do is point users
towards them.

Sam