GnuCash on windows - Instructions for giving it a try

[Thomas Arildsen]

I tried following these instructions. First, I had to change
	OPENSSL_URL="http://slproweb.com/download/Win32OpenSSL-0_9_8c.exe"
into
	OPENSSL_URL="http://slproweb.com/download/Win32OpenSSL-0_9_8d.exe"
in custom.sh
After this, the install ran fine for quite a while. However, now I run into this when it reaches Autotools:

	autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'         ../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib         --language M4sh --cache '' --melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
	Den angivne sti blev ikke fundet.
	autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later: /bin/m4

("Den angivne sti blev ikke fundet" means "The specified path was not found" - it's Danish...) So it looks like m4 is not installed. However, a bit further up the config logs:

	checking for gm4... no
	checking for gnum4... no
	checking for m4... /bin/m4

I interpret this as m4 actually being found and I can also locate m4.exe under msys' bin dir, displaying version 1.4 when queried. Does anyone have an idea what goes wrong here?


Thomas Arildsen

P.S. I am a newbie when it comes to running Linux stuff under Windows. I have some Linux experience and quite a bit Windows experience.

On Thu, Sep 21, 2006 at 04:03:05PM +0200, Christian Stimming wrote:
>/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
/>/ Hash: SHA1
/>/ 
/>/ Dear all,
/>/ 
/>/ several of us have now compiled and run GnuCash on MS Windows by the
/>/ mingw32/gcc compiler environment. This is how everyone else can give it
/>/ a try as well. We would be happy to hear any further feedback about
/>/ problems or (hopefully) success in this matter.
/>/ 
/>/ We've created a shell script that will download, compile, and install
/>/ all requirements of GnuCash on Windows and eventually GnuCash itself. It
/>/ will even make sure to retrieve the most up-to-date gnucash source code
/>/ directly from SVN. Running this script will probably download ~200MB of
/>/ data (but all downloaded data will be cached) and will take anything
/>/ between 0.5 through 5 hours of time. That shell script is located in
/>/ packaging/win32/install.sh of the gnucash SVN sources. For your
/>/ convenience I've attached the content of that directory to this email.
/>/ 
/>/ Before you can execute this shell script (which will do everything else
/>/ automatically), you have to complete these steps manually:
/>/ 
/>/ * Get the content of the packaging/win32 directory of gnucash SVN,
/>/ either from SVN or from the attached archive, and unpack it somewhere on
/>/ your Windows machine.
/>/ 
/>/ * Adapt the directory name variables in the custom.sh file according to
/>/ your preferences; the defaults would install everything in
/>/ subdirectories below c:\soft. (Note that due to shell syntax, every
/>/ windows-style backslash has to be specified as two backslashes.)
/>/ 
/>/ * Download the "MSYS" package from http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
/>/ - -> Section "Current" -> Subsection "MSYS" -> MSYS-1.0.10.exe
/>/ http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.10.exe?download
/>/ 
/>/ * Execute this downloaded package to install it into the chosen
/>/ directory, say, C:\soft\msys (which is the $MSYS_DIR variable in custom.sh)
/>/ 
/>/ * Download the "wget" package from http://www.mingw.org/download.shtml
/>/ - -> Current -> mingwPORT -> wget-1.9.1-mingwPORT.tar.bz2
/>/ http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/wget-1.9.1-mingwPORT.tar.bz2?download
/>/ and place the downloaded file in the $DOWNLOAD_DIR you have set in custom.sh
/>/ 
/>/ * Start the MSYS commandline shell by double-clicking the "MSYS" icon on
/>/ the desktop which should have been created when you installed the MSYS
/>/ package.
/>/ 
/>/ * Let the automated build begin by typing:
/>/ 
/>/   cd $INSTALLER_DIR   (the directory where install.sh is located)
/>/   ./install.sh
/>/ 
/>/ * If there haven't been any errors, you should be able (after several
/>/ hours of compiling and installing) to start gnucash from the MSYS
/>/ command line by typing
/>/ 
/>/   c:/soft/gnucash/bin/gnucash
/>/ 
/>/ or even without MSYS directly by "Start"-> "Run"->
/>/ "c:\soft\gnucash\bin\gnucash.bat"
/>/ 
/>/ Please spread the word and report back any problems you encounter. It is
/>/ probably not too difficult anymore to create a full self-contained
/>/ package of GnuCash on Windows as well! Some more information is also
/>/ collected on http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Windows, but the information
/>/ there might already be out of date as well.
/>/ 
/>/ Good luck everyone with this!
/>/ 
/>/ Christian
/>/ 
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/