gtk+ 2.4.x Run Time

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

MEA-Mike.Friedrichs writes:
> I assume the zip files must be unzipped to some 'xxxxx' directory.
> Then all of the zip files will be unzipped to sub-directories under
> 'xxxxx'.

> Is 'xxxxxx' the only directory to be added to the environmental
> variable 'PATH' ?

Yes. (Not xxxxx itself, but xxxxx\bin.)

> Is there other environmental variables which require changes?

No.

> Do all gtk+ applications require the distributions of the gtk+ and
> glib runtime zip files. 

You forgot Pango and atk, and gettext and libiconv, and things like
libpng and zlib if you need support for PNG image files. Also note
that GTK+ 2.4 is unmaintained since two release cycles. The current
maintained branch of GTK+ is 2.8.

(Read www.gimp.org/win32/downloads.html for some caveats related to
what GTK+ runtime to use.)

> This just seems like a lot of files to support a gtk gui driven
> application to run on a win32 machine.

Well, that's just the way it is. You can leave out things like
localisation files (message catalogs for various languages), if you
are sure that your users will be satisfied with (American) English.

Don't forget that you are also required to distribute, or offer to
provide upon request, the sources for all LGPL or GPL software you
distribute or have distributed. Yes, this means *you*, it's not enough
to provide pointers to download sites maintained by somebody else.

You can unbundle the GTK+ distribution from the application, and
distribute it separately, so that if several apps use GTK+ and
end-users are likely to use just some of the apps, they need download
and install GTK+ only once. This is done for the GIMP.

On the other hand this requires that the different installers for
those apps and GTK+ are aware of each others to some extent, and don't
step on each others' toes. This can be a mess, really. Many people
feel that unbundling GTK+ from apps is a bad move that only creates
more confusion than it's worth.

--tml