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

[Dieter Verfaillie <dieterv optionexplicit be>]

On Thu, 8 Sep 2011 14:18:41 +0100, Sam Thursfield wrote:
> Let me first remind everyone that
> https://live.gnome.org/Windows/Discussion has a good summary of all
> things that are being discussed here. We're kind of heading in four
> different directions at once (fedora-mingw, MSVC, native mingw, OBS)
> so it's important we keep track :)

Maybe it would be a good idea to stop insisting our
beloved GNOME platform should only have 1 blessed set
of binaries for Windows altogether and embrace the
diversity that has been created. All these options
are there for a reason. All of them. At the end of
the day, Free Software development and GNOME are all
about choice, right?

I mean, we can continue this holy war on what's going
to be the next "official" set of binaries ad infinitum.
And never reach any consensus. It's like forcing distroX
down the throat of an avid distroY user, or forcing Vim
onto a follower of the Church of Emacs. There's little
chance anybody will succeed at any of that...

So then it comes down to properly advertising and
documenting the choices we have. Something along the 
lines of "What's the right option for my situation?" on
live.gnome.org and www.gtk.org. Intended audience being
application developers and packagers, off course.

For example:

- I can't or don't want to write a native windows port
  for my application, but still want it to work on Windows:
    > It must be your lucky day! Go have a look at Cygwin,
      it provides a POSIX emulation layer on top of Windows.
    > Best bet for support is <some place Cygwin related>
    ! Note downsides here
    == Happy customer :)

- I want or have to use Visual Studio on Windows:
    > Sure, here's how to build GTK+ with Visual Studio
      Solution files.
    > And here you can learn how to build your own applications
      with Visual Studio.
    > These binaries are linked against msvcrA.dll, for use
      with Visual Studio B.
    > And here's binaries that are linked against msvcrC.dll
      for use with Vidual Studio D.
    > Best bet for support is <???>
    ! Make sure you are allowed to redistribute msvcr?.dll.
      Consult <???> for more information.
    ! Note other downsides here.
    == Have a blast!

- I don't have/want Visual Studio. gcc on windows?
    > No problem. There's a complete Free toolchain
      called MinGW that can function together with a
      minimal POSIX emulation layer called MSYS.
    > mingw-get update && mingw-get install gnome-sdk
    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll
      and can be used with mingw.org's compiler.
    > These binaries come with gobject-introspection support
      out of the box. Well, not yet, but real soon now ;)
    > Best bet for support is <???>
    ! Only works on Windows XP or newer.
    ! Note other downsides here.
    == Have fun!

- Hey, I want to cross compile my stuff from Linux?
    > Cool, have a look at OBS and this script that
      automatically downloads everything you've ever
      dreamed of.
    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll and
      can be used with mingw-w64's compilers
    > Best bet for support is <???>
    ! Note downsides here.
    == Happy hacking!

    > Or have a look at fedora-mingw
    > These binaries are linked against msvcrt.dll and
      can be used with mingw.org's compilers (for now, but
      there's a message somewhere about migrating to mingw-w64
      whenever mingw-w64 has passed Redhat's legal audit).
    > Best bet for support is <???>
    ! Note downsides here.
    == Happy hacking!

    > Or have a look at (Debian's||Gentoo's||...) MinGW
      environment:
    > List specifics here
    ...

- All good and well, but I don't want to bundle a complete
  and private set of dependencies of the GNOME platform?
    > No problem. Here's how to use a shared version of
      the platform.
    > Linked against msvcr10, for use with Visual Studio
      and the DDK.
    > Best bet for support is <???>
    ! Note downsides here.
    = Good luck!

What do you think? Can we try and collaborate on such a
text on live.gnome.org and/or windows-devel-list or something?

With that out of the way, we can finally all focus on
getting the GNOME Platform back on track on Windows and
start coming up with patches :)

> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:12 PM, John Stowers
> <john stowers lists gmail com> wrote:
>> Cool!
>>
>> note: these are my uninformed ideas, I have not actually seen the
>> implementation for the methods you describe...
>>
>> I think JHBuild is *almost* able to do this itself. If the binary/zip
>> module type patch was applied to JHbuild then I think this would not be
>> too much work to complete.
> 
> I'm actually not sure the binary module type is such a good idea any
> more. It used to be the case that in my windows fork of jhbuild the
> binary module type was used to upgrade and patch various parts of MSYS
> and get hold of deps like libpng, zlib, etc. Since then, mingw-get has
> arrived and the general state of MSYS is a lot stronger, to the point
> where it doesn't really need patching at all any more. As for the deps
> - I reckon the way forward is to come up with a script that will bring
> together all of the build deps for the Gtk+ stack and provision them
> for developers either in a mingw-get repo, or just as a massive "the
> entire build environment" .ZIP file. I'm thinking of this from a
> mingw-only point of view, but presumably the same script could
> generate a build environment for MSVC too with a little extra code.

Sounds like the beginnings of one or more "GNOME Windows
SDK('s)" to me. Several variants to choose from. Different
tools to tackle different problems.

Cool!

mvg,
Dieter