Re: Developing in Windows

[Vasily Galkin <galkin-vv yandex ru>]

Hi!
Almost all features exept translations can be used & developed on windows.
I have a corresponding local install, but I'm not sure that I exactly remember all steps.

Here is steps which I remember:
1. install msys2 from https://www.msys2.org/
After installation it provides 3 environments:
 ** msys2 (unix-like environment, useful for running unix scrips without huge changes)
 ** mingw32 (32bit dev environment - used to build windows apps like meld, for 32 bit binaries)
 ** mingw64 (32bit dev environment - used to build windows apps like meld, for 64 bit binaries)

Most of the time mingw64 is the best choice
2. install some packages to get dependencies (from mingw64 shell):
$ pacman -Syu
$ pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gedit mingw-w64-x86_64-python3-gobject 
mingw-w64-x86_64-gsettings-desktop-schemas 

I do NOT advise installing meld package via pacman. It may conflict with local sources tree.

3. Now you can run meld (Start with meld-3-20 branch may be simpler. Current master may contain some extra 
steps/changes to run on windows).
$ cd /d/apps/meld-checkout #your folder with meld checkout "/d" is drive D:
$ #maybe "glib-compile-schemas data" needed here, not sure
$ python3 bin/meld
(some translation-related warnings may appear and main meld will appear after several seconds)

4. To build zip and msi package refer to command line in the .gitlab-ci.yml. Something like:
$ glib-compile-schemas data
$ python3 setup_win32.py bdist_dumb --bdist-dir build\bdist.mingw\msi --keep-temp bdist_msi --keep-temp

This will prepare zip and msi in dist folder.


> Hi y'all,
>
> Can one develop and build this in Windows, or do I need to use Linux? If it needs to be Linux as I suspect, 
> does anyone have a virtual machine they don't mind giving me, by chance? It'd save me a bit of time, though 
> it's not necessary. If it can be built in Windows, how? I keep getting this error:
>
> > compiling gresources
> > glib-compile-resources --target=build\data\org.gnome.meld.gresource --sourcedir=meld/resources 
> > meld/resources/meld.gresource.xml
> > error: command 'glib-compile-resources' failed: No such file or directory
>
> Have a delightful day!
>
> Sincerely,
> Waldo