Re: Feedback on my Win32 GTK+ Experience

[Micah Carrick <email micahcarrick com>]

Thank you for your response. It is very helpful.

- Micah Carrick

 Developer - http://www.micahcarrick.com
 GTK+ Forums - http://www.gtkforums.com



Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> > 1. libxml-2.0 from libxml2-2.6.30.win32.zip was missing the .pc file for pkg-config.
> >     
>
> I guess libxml2-2.6.30.win32.zip is the one on
> http://xmlsoft.org/sources/win32/ ? Please ask Igor Zlatkovic to
> include also the .pc file in his packages.
>
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/dependencies/libxml2-dev-2.6.27.zip
> (which is simply a slight repackaging by me of what Igor provides)
> does include the .pc file.
>
>   
> > I simply found this file in the sources elsewhere and copied
> > to C:\MinGW\lib\pkgconfig\libxml-2.0.pc. Is this normal?
> >     
>
> Yes and no. If you have the rest of libxml2 under c:\mingw, then it is
> the right thing to do.
>
> My personal preference is not to mix stuff from different sources. I
> keep only stuff from www.mingw.org in my mingw folder, and then I have
> a separate folder for stuff from gnuwin32.sourceforge.net, for
> instance, separate folders for things from GNOME SVN I have built
> myself (one folder for the current "stable" branch of things, one for
> the trunk, and one for each separate version of each package),
> separate folders for GNU libraries I have built (and distribute Win32
> binaries of) myself, etc.
>
>   
> > 2. zlib from zlib123-dll.zip had a couple of things. First, I had to
> > copy zlib1.dll to my bin/ directory. Secondly, the pkg-config files used
> > -lz as the linker flag, and thus I had to copy /lib/zdll.lib to
> > /lib/libz.a. The USAGE file said to rename zdll.lib to libzdll.a which I
> > ALSO did to ensure it works either way. Is this right? Why isn't it
> > libz.a already?
> >     
>
> Ask the people who make that package. Please understand that the
> distribution of Open Source software for Windows is not as tightly
> organized and managed as the packages for typical Linux distros. Some
> people do it one way, others another way.
>
>   
> > As I understand it, I can simply write my installer the
> > same way I did back in my Windows programming days and deploy it with
> > the DLL files necessary [as round] in the /bin dir.
> >     
>
> That is the way I recommend, yes. Keep the application executable and
> the DLLs of dependent libraries in the same "bin" folder of the
> run-time folder structure.
>
>   
> > 3. Is copying the .DLL dependencies to the system (\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32)
> > directory appropriate for the deployment of GTK+ applications on Win32?
> > I know it "works", but is that the standard convention?
> >     
>
> No. It is definitely not standard and correct these days. It used to
> be many years ago.
>
> --tml
>
>