Re: EXTERNAL: Windows Installer for Gtk+3.6.2 and gtkmm-3.6.0

[tarnyko tarnyko net]

OK, I think I have to talk now. 

The technical reason behind the lack of "official" GTK+3 Win32 bundle, is 
that someone needs to provide a reusable and predictible FULL build 
environment. 

That means, folks running Win32 must be able to grab a big package 
containing GTK+3 source with everything needed (MSYS, MinGW, dependencies, 
a.s.o), install it easily, click on a "build" shortcut and get resulting 
binaries in a dest folder.
And it should adapt to every new GTK+3 release out there, so we can get 
binaries for each version as time goes by. 

I made such system. It's not perfect, but well documented and runs natively 
on Windows XP/Vista/7/8. Everything works. You can see it here :
http://www.tarnyko.net/repo/gtk3_build_system/ 

So, what's the problem ?
Well, we get to the second reason, and it's purely "relational" : there is 
no official maintainer anymore. That means, no-one which could validate me, 
or anyone else, to have write access to GTK+ servers and upload bundles.
And finding someone to help you is not easy. I tried many ways, this list, 
IRC... 

Well I thought I might get it upstream, but was proven wrong (months ago).
It's very sad.
And I'm glad you're sending this messages Balint because I think it very 
negatively impacts the GTK+ project and its credibility, just as you do. 

I spent time to get this build environment running, thought that I could 
find support, was wrong, and deceptively switched to another projects 
(currently improving ValaIDE, big release is coming). 

So I'm sending this ultimate message in a bottle : PLEASE someone validate 
me, or anyone wanting to contribute, as Win32 maintainer -or at least 
"bundle provider". Or at least discuss the topic seriously once. Benjamin 
Otte if you're reading this, GNOME love folks... anyone. 

Regards,
Tarnyko 

Bálint Réczey writes: 

> 2013/2/17 Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>:
> > On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Bálint Réczey <balint balintreczey hu>
> > wrote:
> > > Hi Paul, 
> > >
> > > 2013/2/17 Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 7:27 AM, Bálint Réczey <balint balintreczey hu>
> > > > wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Unfortunately our efforts are severely impacted by the lack of official
> > > >> GTK+
> > > >> installers for Windows and OS X and this uncertainty was a major reason
> > > >> which
> > > >> brought the Qt port alive.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I'm not speaking as a representative of the GTK project, but I will note
> > > > that as the lead developer of a large scale app that uses GTK to provide
> > > > portability to Linux, OS X and Windows, it is my judgement that you
> > > > should
> > > > plan to bundle GTK within your application and not rely on it being
> > > On GNU/Linux distributions we rely on the package manager to provide the
> > > GTK libraries and it works perfectly.
> >
> >
> > There is no package manager on OS X that could do this. MacPorts or Fink
> > would be the only equivalent, in which case you would need to talk to them
> > about their plans for GTK3. However, you will likely find that if you ever
> > need to do development on an OS X system, the presence of packages from
> > either MacPorts or Fink can make life very, very complex unless it just so
> > happens that they have the precise versions that you need. 
> >
> > > > understanding of things, but on OS X it simply makes a lot more sense to
> > > > cook up a .app bundle with everything your application needs, including
> > > > GTK
> > > > and really seems to reflects Apple's intentions for 3rd party apps that
> > > > rely
> > > > on additional 3rd party libraries. 
> > >
> > > Wireshark already provide such bundles at
> > > https://wireshark.org/download.html
> > > thus the problem is only not having the GTK3 binaries we could put in
> > > the bundles.
> >
> >
> > so build it yourself ... what is the problem? 
> >
> > moreover, the nature of GTK is such that you cannot "just" include the
> > binaries in the bundle and expect stuff to work. GTK (2 and 3) are not
> > currently "relocatable" except on Windows.
> OK, I'm asking specifically for official pre-built _Windows_ binaries. 
>
> For OS X building GTK seems to be reasonable and well documented. 
>
> Cheers,
> Balint
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