Re: Windows 32/64bit downloads and/or bundles for 2.x and 3.x

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 12/04/13 02:30, Arnavion wrote:
> Hello,

Hello Arnavion,

> I am a fellow Hexchat dev with bviktor, and I thought I'd just provide a
> few clarifications:-
> 1. The instructions to build GTK+ on gtk.hexchat.org
> <http://gtk.hexchat.org> are for building using Visual Studio 2012, as
> opposed to Tarnkyo's work that uses MinGW. We use VS to build our entire
> stack (GTK and its deps, openssl, and Hexchat itself).
> 2. We have indeed found several problems getting these to build with VS.
> To that end, we have a bunch of patches scoured from the GTK bug tracker
> and other places, as well as a few we've written ourselves. These
> patches can be seen on https://github.com/hexchat/gtk-win32
> 3. Our goal was to make it easy for the user to build the stack using
> our instructions, for which we also provide a build script on the same
> repository. (hexchat-build.ps1)

Thank you for those.

I would like to add that I know there are differences, but what I want 
to bring to the windows offering for users/developers is some unity and 
consistency so people not only have a choice between all flavours 
(32bit, 64bit, MSVC, MinGW, sources, binaries, bundles, etc).

I would like to see:

- Patches upstreamed in all cases where possible (like the ones you 
mention Arnavion).

- Downloads available from gtk.org, not external sites to give end users 
a consistency and feeling these binaries are authentic and affiliated 
(this is most important IMO). I often wondered when I downloaded Tor's 
binaries back in the day why they weren't on gtk.org and was wary of that.

- People taking maintainer-ship of providing bundles, msvc builds, etc 
and helping with updates to the gtk.org website in respect to that.

- A well documented FAQ to help people with their disciplines on Windows 
(e.g. for MSVC or MinGW, for 32bit OR 64bit, etc). The current 
documentation is ... well ... old and chaotic IMO. I would like some 
easy steps people can follow to understand *which* Windows download they 
need depending on what they're doing (e.g. bundles for just everything 
with MinGW, or the hexchat stuff for MSVC sources only, etc). It should 
be as easy as installing GTK+ on a Linux distribution, this is something 
you can do in a few steps. As it currently stands, it's easier to build 
on a Linux distribution than to use on Windows.

Perhaps this is too utopian? But we should make it easy for people to 
use GTK+ on Windows. Looking at how you install or use Qt (for example), 
they have a similar problem. There are a bunch of steps to get started. 
I think GTK+ would look attractive if it was well supported and 
documented on Windows right from the download link. By that I mean, in 2 
or 3 steps, from downloading, you're done setting it up.

In the end, I realise there are different requirements here, some people 
want just binaries to link against, others want to build the entire 
stack. But I think we should consider each of these use cases and have a 
clear wizard/path on the website to make it easy for people to get 
started with GTK+ on Windows with their compiler and architecture of choice.

--
Regards,
Martyn

Founder and CEO of Lanedo GmbH.