GLib cross-platform runtime relocation support (was Re: Glib: a Win32 discussion)

[Hans Breuer <hans breuer org>]

At 07.04.2011 02:26, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Kean Johnston<kean johnston gmail com>  wrote:
>
> > Last, but by no means least, is the reliance on "compiled" files, like
> > compiled schemas (or in the case of Gtk, icon caches). On UNIX systems where
> > things are installed in a universally-accessible location, this isn't a
> > problem, but on Win32, where multiple applications could all include their
> > own private copies of the DLL's, this is a problem. Fixing this is a bit
>
> the same thing applies to anyone who wants to make a relocatable Unix
> "bundle". i've demonstrated that this is entirely possible even
> without any win32-style mechanisms, although it breaks when GSettings
> has been used by the desktop to specify modules that GTK should load
> which are not included in the bundle. the new binary-only packages of
> Ardour3 use the bag of tricks i've come up with to make GTK, Glib,
> Gdk-Pixbuf and Pango all find files inside the bundle in preference to
> any outside of it.
This set of functionality is supported for Gtk+/win32 from quite the 
beginning. Of course it uses win32 specific APIs to calculate the pathes at 
runtime.

> it doesn't require any changes to glib, or gtk etc,
> but the app has to do some stuff. see fixup_bundle_environment() (the
> OS X or linux cases) here:
>
> http://subversion.ardour.org/svn/ardour2/branches/3.0/gtk2_ardour/main.cc
This code looks similar to what is done in GLib/Pango/Gtk+/Dia ...
Maybe it is time to provide a cross-platform GLib API to simplify it?

-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to
get along without it.                -- Dilbert