* Armin Burgmeier <
armin arbur net> [2008-10-15 20:25:22 +0200]:
> On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 13:33 -0400, Philip Kovacs wrote:
> > I installed the latest gtkmm Windows development package and I have
> > some comments.
> >
> > From the point of view of application developers who require gtkmm as
> > a dependency, this new -vcXX- naming convention for the import libraries
> > is a burden.
> >
> > I have to rework my build systems to handle this new library naming
> > convention; offer end-users a switch to select VC80/90 and then link
> > to the correct libraries after "assembling" a library name based on the
> > switch.
>
> I don't know what your end-users are (actual users, or application
> developers?), but can't you just use the vc80 binaries if you are
> building with MSVC++ 2005 and the vc90 ones if you are building with
> MSVC++ 2008?
I am the developer, so my end-users are the ones who will install the
gtkmm runtime in order to use my applications.
The argument that "confusion would result" if people copied the gtkmm
files into Windows/System32 is specious. People simply should not
be doing that. You should install gtkmm to a non-system directory and
then use the path environment var to add the gtkmm bin/ to your path.
My issue with the naming convention is that developers, such as myself,
now have to make some very unusual changes to their build systems
to link gtkmm/glibmm/cairomm/sigc correctly.
Furthermore, there is no real need to tag the import libraries with the
runtime name since the link libraries can easily be observed with programs
like depends.exe. Anyone who is "confused" as to what gtkmm-2_4.dll links
to can use depends, or programs like it, to observe what is going on.
The visual cue in the filenames is very unusual and throws a problem back
to all build systems that have the *mm's as deps.
Even if you were to maintain only one installer, it would be better to install
several trees that are rooted by the runtime version, rather than create one
tree and use these names.
I hope you will consider it.
Phil
BTW I know you worked hard on the new installer and my criticism is meant
to be taken in a constructive light.
