Re: GTK+3 Win32 Bundles : RFC

[Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org>]

Hello Tamyko,

First of all I'd like to say kudos for your amazing work. There is a
lot of people out there who depend on Gtk+ being built on Windows and
your efforts are greatly appreciated.

2013/9/8 Tarnyko <tarnyko tarnyko net>:
> Hi again folks,
> As of today, the state of the GTK+3 Win32 Bundles is the following :
> Cross-platform build environment is setup in the GNOME infrastructure. It
> has the attribute of not using pre-built packages (RPMs), but only a minimal
> MinGW compiler able to rebuild all the stack, from Gettext to GTK+3.
> Resulting binaries can be found on :
> http://win32builder.gnome.org/
> They notably integrate MinGW and MSVC import libraries.
>
> I'd like to have feedback on the following subjects :
> - GTK+2 bundles used to integrate Gettext, Freetype and Fontconfig binaries.
> They're not directly needed, however Gettext is useful for
> internationalization, and some well-known software (GIMP, Inkscape) use
> Freetype/Fontconfig.
> Scraping them from the bundle will free 5-10 Mb of compressed space. Should
> I keep them ?

The answer here is hard. I'm inclined to say that you should scrap as
much stuff as possible (unused binaries and as much dependencies as
possible). If only to make the automated build a bit more reliable
(the less stuff you build yourself the better).

Wrt freetype/fontconfig it is worth considering how many packages can
make good use of it, you mentined gimp and inkscape which are probably
two of the most popular Gtk+ apps on Windows, so it seems reasonable
to keep them.

> - As of GTK+ 3.8, generating MSVC import libraries requires the MSVC
> toolchain itself. I'm currently setup-ing 3.8 buildenv without them. People
> interested in having them in the bundle should :
> * give insight on how to run MSVC on a Linux machine/integrate a Win32
> machine in the GNOME infrastructure
> * contact me to help me setup such a toolchain (personally unexperienced on
> this topic).

How about a Windows VM? I know Microsoft gives away Microsoft
liceneses to free software projects and I've set up build servers with
Windows in the past using SSH. The alternative, which is running MSVC
on Linux/Wine is going to be HARD.

> I'll soon link this post to
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=695600, so we can have the
> bundles on the gtk.org website.
> Regards,
> Tarnyko
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-- 
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz