Re: Win32 Binaries

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

Surya Kiran Gullapalli writes:
 > 1. Build gtkmm using the project files provided in gtkmm source package, 
 > with MS visual studio 8 compiler with gtk+ libraries built using
 >    gcc compiler on mingw ?

To the best of my knowledge, yes, with some restrictions. The gtk+
binaries produced by gcc are compatible with MSVC-produced code, at
least for MSVC6.

One thing to keep in mind is that glib, pango and gtk use the
compiler-independent bundled msvcrt.dll C runtime, while current MS
compilers produce code that use a compiler-specific runtime (for VS8
that would be msvcr80.dll, AFAIK). This might have some interesting
consequences. At least, you cannot use GLib or GTK+ API that take as
arguments, or return as values, references to data in the C runtime.

Such API would be for instance g_open(), g_fopen(), g_fprintf(),
g_io_channel_win32_new_fd(). For example, the return value from
g_open() is a file descriptor, a small number, actually an index into
a table insode the msvcrt.dll runtime, which is not at all related to
whatever the same file descriptor might mean in msvcr80.dll, if it is
at all valid. Also recall that the file descriptor is part of the FILE
structure, so g_fprintf() wouldn't work if the FILE you pass to it is
opened by a fopen call in your code, and thus refers to a file
descriptor in msvcr80.dll.

--tml