Re: Makeing librsvg work (bizp2.dll missing)

["Freddie Unpenstein" <fredderic excite com>]

From: "Michael Torrie", Date: 31/07/2009 02:49, Wrote:

> If you are hell-bent on a system-wide GTK, then you need to do it the
> way that Gaim for win32 used to. They would install GTK to C:\Program
> Files\Common Files\GTK\%version%. Then their own app would go to
> C:\Program Files\Gaim. The magic is in the startup shortcut (or batch
> file). All they have to do is start Gaim inside the GTK folder
> (optionally add the application's bin folder to PATH). Hence this
> scheme supports multiple versions of GTK also by just adjusting which
> folder the app actually started in, if that makes sense. It seemed to
> work pretty well. I'm not sure if they still do this though.

That sounds straight forward enough.  And a hell of a lot better than the current situation.

At least that way, with some minimal smarts in the installer, the GTK libraries will get the occasional update.  Are there any good reasons why that shouldn't be the default install?  The only one I've seen so far, is so that changes in the appearance of one application don't propagate to other GTK-based applications.  So make it easier to set application-level theme overrides.


I've seen a couple programs that install 3rd party components as part of their own installation process.  Several that even download those components at install time, before starting their own installation.  How hard would it be to provide a "GTK sub-installer" that could;

- check for a GTK package optionally included with the application
- offer to check for and download a newer version where suitable
- ask (if not already told) whether to install app- or system- wide
- not downgrade an existing more recent GTK install
- be able to run as a component of the application installer

If the GTK installer were to register applications with the GTK libraries (a simple ini file in the GTK directory), the uninstaller could offer to remove the old GTK libraries if nothing else is using them.  Further, a 3rd party (recommended, if not included with GTK for Windows) application could periodically check for minor updates to the installed GTK versions (possibly even the applications themselves as well), and take over removal of no longer used versions.  It's a function that most Linux distributions do already, but until Windows Update starts supporting random 3rd party applications, having the framework the application is based on handle it in a consistent manner is probably the next best thing.  Updating for security reasons is becoming a big issue these days, and having every application do it its own way, some of which work better than others, and worse still, all wanting to install their own programs to periodically check for updates, and so forth...  I think a system-wide (or at least, user-wide) install with trivial support for application configuration overrides (for those who still want their application to live in a little world all its own, Windows-style), is just the right thing to do.


Fredderic


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