Re: Gtkmm Windows installers available

[Armin Burgmeier <armin arbur net>]

On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 18:14 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-10-03 at 13:55 +0200, Armin Burgmeier wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 18:49 -0400, Philip Kovacs wrote:
> > > On the "Building gtkmm on Windows" web page I note the statement:
> > > 
> > > "We suggest that you use MSYS to build gtkmm on Windows."
> > > 
> > > This statement can only be be interpreted as:
> > 
> > This is meant as: "If you want to build gtkmm with MinGW, then we
> > recommend using MSYS to do so", since it is in the "Using MinGW"
> > section. I made it more clear on the Wiki page.
> > 
> > > "We suggest that you build your project, gtkmm and another other C++ libraries
> > > you intend to build from source with MSYS."
> > > 
> > > Building any C++ project component with MINGW/MSYS means a total commitment
> > > to that environment/build system for all C++ project components.  C++ projects
> > > and the libraries that they use must be built with the same compiler, due to
> > > name mangling, exception handling, stack issues, etc.
> > > 
> > > "The MSVC++ DLLs have been built with Visual C++ 2005."
> > > 
> > > is fine, but better would be:
> > > 
> > > "The MSVC++ DLLs have been built with Visual C++ 2005 and are linked to the
> > >  MS C/C++ runtime DLLs: MSVCR80.DLL / MSVCP80.DLL."
> > 
> > It's a Wiki. Feel free to improve things yourself.
> > 
> > > In my case, my Windows system has a later runtime environment: MSVCR90.DLL /
> > > MSVCP90.DLL (MS Visual Studio 2008), so I have to recompile anyway. I think
> > > cautioning people to verify which MS C/C++ runtime they have: 70/80/90, etc.
> > > before using the binary installer would be a good thing.
> > 
> > I don't have too much experience with different runtimes, but I
> > succeeded in building a small example application with Visual Studio
> > 2008 against the binaries of the installer, which have been built with
> > Visual Studio 2005. Doesn't this work in general?
> > 
> > I think the MSVCR80 runtime files are still shipped with Visual Studio
> > 2008.
> > 
> > > Anyway, I have built each of: gtkmm/glibmm/sigc++/cairomm sucessfully with
> > > MS VC++ 2008.  I just wish there were a way to automate the installation of
> > > the development files to a target path from that gtkmm source tree.
> > 
> > If that's indeed a problem, then we probably need to ship separate files
> > for both Visual Studio 2005 (linked against *80.DLL) and 2008 (linked
> > against *90.DLL).
> 
> That does sound necessary. People would otherwise sometimes be forced to
> link to both, which is probably unpleasant. Can you take care of that,
> please, Armin?

Yes. We will have to think of a naming convention for those binaries.
gtkmm-2.4-vc9.dll? (in contrast to gtkmm-2.4.dll for VS 2005, which we
might then rename to gtkmm-2.4-vc8.dll, possibly breaking compatibility)

But I'm still not 100% convinced. Do other C++ projects that provide
Windows binaries also ship different DLLs for each Visual Studio
Version?

> And please make sure that those improvements are in the wiki, if Philip
> doesn't do that.

Armin