Re: Fwd: Plans for GTK+ Bundles for win32 and win64?

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 08/09/11 09:45, Kean Johnston wrote:
> > If there is consent amongst the team and this is available, I can set up
> > the gtk.org pages for this.
>
> There isn't consent. Some people are against the notion of having GTK+
> be a "shared component" due to two main concerns (both addressable):
> 1. The myriad issues surrounding the choice of CRT to use: the system
> provided msvcrt.dll or the compiler-provided msvcrtXXX.dll. It is not

Yea, forgive me, I have not had to worry about that since my last 
experience was when only MS Visual Studio 6 was around so only 
msvcrt.dll. I hear the problem is much worse these days but I didn't 
know there was a choice.

> possible to target msvcrt.dll using Visual Studio 2010 for example, you
> have to go all the way back to Visual Studio 2006, unless you use the
> DDK, which is a much more modern compiler.

What do you mean by "target" here? When I was last using GTK+ on 
Windows, I just wrote the app in emacs and built it in MinGW/MSYS, so I 
don't know how things fare these days in Visual Studio. I did use VS at 
some point, but even then the run time dll wasn't an issue.

> 2. The concern that if package A installs the shared component and
> package B comes along and also installs it, but it happens to be an
> earlier revisions, you may encounter problems.

Isn't that just about where it's installed and apps making sure paths 
are set up properly?

> Problem 1 is most easily solved by creating a custom compilation suite
> for building GTK itself using a mixture of Visual Studio 2010 and the
> DDK. As part of the work I am currently doing I am making a full set of
> step by step instructions on exactly how to do that.

Sounds great! :)

> Problem 2 is most easily solved by sensible naming of the DLL's, or as
> an alternative, linking statically. There is no mandate in the Windows
> world that we preserve libtool's insane version numbering for libraries.
> We can (and should) have more sensibly named libraries such as
> glib228.dll rather than glib2.dll, which covers WAY too broad a scope
> (just to pick on glib).

Couldn't agree more. Why aren't they named nicely anyway?

> So that others do not duplicate the same work I am doing, here is what I
> am working towards:
> 1. A single source tree with all of the required components, from zlib
> on up, that can be built for either Win32 or Win64, either as a DLL or
> as a static library.
> 2. An easy-to-install runtime package that will contain all of the
> runtime components needed to run a complex GTK application.
> 3. An easy-to-install development environment for the above.

Fantastic.

> My ultimate goal is to try to make a "standard" distribution of all of
> these packages that many applications can link against. I am
> constructing things in such a way that an individual application can
> elect to either use a shared version of the packages, or, at their
> option, their own private copy if that makes more sense to their
> distribution model. All that is required is 1 line of code to set an
> environment variable at the very top of their application early in WinMain.

That standard distribution is what should be on gtk.org for developers 
of course. That's another part of what I would love to see there.

> It would be my preference that this "distribution" be hosted on gtk.org
> but I have been crafting things under the assumption that this may be
> difficult or too slow, and I am making a "productized" version of the
> full suite that interested parties can either just download and use, or
> compile themselves.

If you have a gnome.org git account you can update the website. 
Currently I am (with the exception of Javier Jardon who does a great job 
kicking the site into shame when I let things slip) the only one 
updating it. The module is gtk-web.

I welcome you to create a branch with the web changes you want to make 
and ask me for review. I even have a test server for checking the 
look/feel of new stuff first and for review on this list. The server is:

  http://curlybeast.net:8080/

> For the sake of completeness here is the set of code that I build:
> zlib 1.2.5
> iconv 1.14
> gettext-runtime (-lintl) 1.18.1.1
> libpng 1.5.4
> giflib 4.1.6
> jpeg 8c
> libxml2 2.7.8
> libxslt 1.1.26
> expat 2.0.1
> freetype2 2.4.6
> fontconfig 2.8.0
> pixman 0.23.2
> pcre 8.13
> glib 2.28.8
> cairo 1.10.2
> pango 1.28.4
> gdk-pixbuf 2.24.0
> atk 2.0.1
> gtk+ 3.0.12
>
> I've recently updated some of those versions and I am still working
> through the full build, but its close.

Thanks for the details!

--
Regards,
Martyn

Founder and CEO of Lanedo GmbH.