Re: GTK+ for Windows MSVCRT dependency?

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

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 > I'm curious about one thing, though.  What does the MSVCRT runtime
 > provide that the Windows GTK+ port requires?

A C library. What do you think it is? MSVCRT is the most appropriate C
runtime to use, I think, and so do most people who build and
distribute Open Source software for Windows. What would you suggest
instead?

 > I'm surprised that there would be a dependency on any Microsoft DLL
 > (other than the base Windows DLLs).

MSVCRT *is* a base Windows DLL. It's distributed as part of the
operating system (since Win95 OSR2 or something like that), not with
Microsoft's compilers.

On the contrary, Microsoft's current compilers strongly try to
convince developers to use MSVCR7X.DLL instead (for some number X,
MSVCR71 I think the current one is). Although MSVCR7X.DLL is
redistributable, this would cause problems for LGPL/GPL software,
according to many interpretations of the licenses. I am not so sure
myself whether it actually would be a problem license-wise. But then,
I am not a lawyer, nor is English my native tongue.

But anyway, switching to MSVCR71 would mean technical problems. All
dependent packages would also have to switch to it, i.e. stuff like
zlib, libpng, gettext-runtime etc. I certainly don't want to build
these myself as long as there are perfectly valid binary distributions
already, either built/endorsed by the respective package's maintainers
themselvbes, or from well-known places, like the
gnuiwin32.sourceforge.net site. To avoid DLL hell, the names of a DLL
when built to use MSVCR71 would have to be different than if built to
use MSVCRT. Etc, lots of work.

Also on Unix and Linux, practically all user-level software
(i.e. anything except the kernel and its modules) depends on the C
library. So I don't see what's so strange about it?

 > I love being able to build Windows GTK+ applications on my Linux
 > system!

Yes. I am tempted to start cross-compiling from Linux to Windows
myself some day, it should be much faster. (I would presumably do it
using vmware.) The Cygwin Unix emulation used by the autotools and
especially libtool is speed killer.

--tml