gtk+ for windows problem

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

Erpo writes:
> The folks in #gimp on irc.gimp.org told me that this was definitely a
> bug

This same problem has been reported on the gimpwin-users
list. Basically it is a packaging problem. Some of the lower-level
dependent DLL (intl? iconv? zlib? something like that) is a different
version in the two installers. One packages an older version, and the
other a newer version, and also needs the new version. Then GTK+
installed by the other isn't noticed by the first. I don't remember
the exact details.

Some investigating with some DLL dependency checking tool (Dependency
Walker, MS link /dump, or GNU objdump) will make it all clear.

Anyway, it's something that the GIMP installer writer and the GAIM
installer writer need to resolve between themselves.

> Just tried again with more updated software. Gaim 0.77 (which comes with
> "gtk+ 2.2.4 rev c") and the gimp 2.0.1 have the same problem.

Apparently the GAIM and GIMP installer people still need to talk to
eachothers. I don't know whether they are on this list.

Problems like this is one consequence of using installers. If you just
had one separately installable (and relatively easily uninstallable)
package for each separate component, you wouldn't have this kind of
problem. But then, installers are of course much easier to use for
end-users, as long as they work properly.

It really is a pity that Windows has no canonical package management
solution. I.e. nothig like Red Hat's RPM or Solaris's pkg*. (Odd that
nobody has ported RPM to Windows. I, for one, would embrace it, and if
other porters of Open Source packages would do that, too, problems
like this would be a thing of the past.)

--tml