Re: What's the current status on building and/or using gtkmm with MSVC 2005?

[Cedric Gustin <cedric gustin gmail com>]

Hi Timon,

Timon Christl wrote:
> I would like to know if gtkmm 2.8.x can be built by, or used with MS
> Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition.

Don't konw about Visual C++ Express but I have built my binaries with
Visual Studio 2005 and it seems to work quite ok for intermediate scale
project like Gideon for example. Of course, I'd like to hear about other
user experiences...

> Some background info: I'm currently in the process of porting
> SharpConstruct from Linux to Win32, which uses gtkmm. I downloaded the
> binary installer from http://www.pcpm.ucl.ac.be/~gustin/win32_ports/,
> and I can successfully compile and link the app, but at runtime almost
> nothing really works. The problem has to be the gtkmm DLLs, because if
> I copy-paste the code fragments where the crashes occur into small
> test programs, the crashes disappear.

As you might know, it is mandatory to use the '/vd2' compiler flag when
building your gtkmm project. Also, you should be careful when linking
against the gtkmm libraries. For a Debug project, select the import
libraries with a 'd' in their name (gtkmm-2.4d.lib, atkmm-1.6d.lib,
...). For a Release project, link againt the gtkmm-2.4.lib,
atkmm-1.6.lib, ... libraries. I recently realized that mixing
Debug/Release gtkmm import librairies and settings can lead to some
unexpected crashes at runtime. I don't know if this can be traced back
to the use of '/vd2' flag. Some further debugging is required here...

> Therefore, if gtkmm has some known problems with MSVC 2005, I would
> like to know about them. It could be a compiler bug, but it could also
> be something inside gtkmm that is wrong.

Did you try to build some of the gtkmm examples or the gtkmm-demo ?
These should work fine. a good starting point for your project are the
.vcproj files you will find in the latest gtkmm-2.8 tarball. I haven't
committed the updated versions for Visual Studio 2005 to CVS yet, but
the major change to those project files is the 'vd2' flag to be added to
the list of compiler options.

> Excuses If this is not the right list to discuss gtkmm on Win32.

This is indeed the right list.

Cedric