Jerry Haltom writes: > Some are included alongside the applications that use them, a > private copy.
This is the recommended way. Experience has shown, time and time again, that trying to use a shared installation of GTK+ among several separately developed and distributed applications on Windows is futile and won't work. Sorry. Firstly, Windows doesn't have package management like Linux or Solaris. There is no way to automatically keep track of what apps requires what versions of some library and don't like some other version, etc. Secondly, there are unfortunate slight differences in semantics between different GTK+ (or GLib, or Pango) versions on Windows. Yes, in an ideal world there shouldn't be, everything should be 100% backward compatible. But the fact is that some app might work properly only with (to just invent an example) GTK+ 2.8.17 and GLib 2.8.7, which some other app works fine with any version, including the newest (maintained branch) version GTK+ 2.10.6. > This is non-optimal. >From a disk-space perspective, yes. So what? > a) Go to gtk.org, download the gtk.msm file (Windows Installer Merge > Module.) > b) Add the MSM to my setup project in Visual Studio. If you think most people who distribute GTK+-using applications for Windows use Visual Studio, you are very mistaken. Many people (including the very subject of this mailing list you posted to, gnuwin32) use the GNU toolchain. (And I use the GNU toolchain to build GTK+, GNOME libraries, etc for Windows.) > To reach that goal I started work on creating some WIX installer files > for Gtk+ and family. And then I realized something. Where should I put > these files? Open an own project on sourceforge? > My goal is to build a gettext.wix, a gtk+.wix, a pango.wix, and the > entire stack, and have these .wix files included in the upstream CVS of > each independent project. It would not be appropriate for gettext.wix to > install into a folder structure with "GTK" in the name. Upstream would > never accept it. So what's to be done? Once you have a plan fully thought out, please present it on the gtk-devel-list. Also, be prepared to maintain any new "wix" etc files you suggest introducing for at least a few years. > What are you all doing? Are you maintaining your own complete set of > compilation scripts? Installing into your own prefix? The Win32 packages I distribute from ftp.gtk.org and ftp.gnome.org are in the simplest form imaginable: plain zip files. They can be installed in any prefix the end-user (or sysadmin) wants. No paths are hardcoded, the code in DLLs looks up where they are located and construct paths to other files needed at run-time from that. All that's needed is for the DLLs to be found either in PATH, or by the application EXE the end-user runs being located in the same "bin" folder as the DLLs. > Obviously what I am doing is completely aligned with this project. With "this project", do you mean gnuwin32, or GTK+? --tml ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ GnuWin32-Users mailing list GnuWin32-Users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gnuwin32-users
