GnuCash on windows - Instructions for giving it a try

[Christian Stimming]

Am Donnerstag, 28. September 2006 16:52 schrieb Volker Englisch:
> I think this is terrific being able to run GnuCash on MS Windows (not
> that I'm going to change my platform for running GnuCash :-)).

:-) neither do we.

> I had some time last night to try out the instructions for installing
> GnuCash on Windows.  The instructions were easy to follow but when I run
> the install.sh the process stops shortly after make is invoked.

That's unfortunate to hear. Obviously the process stops when "make" for 
"guile" is invoked, which is still far from reaching the actual gnucash.

> There is a warning displayed when during configure. I don't know if this
> is related to the error in make:
>
> checking winsock2.h presence... yes
> configure: WARNING: winsock2.h: present but cannot be compiled
> configure: WARNING: winsock2.h:     check for missing prerequisite headers?
> configure: WARNING: winsock2.h: see the Autoconf documentation
> configure: WARNING: winsock2.h:     section "Present But Cannot Be
> Compiled" configure: WARNING: winsock2.h: proceeding with the
> preprocessor's result configure: WARNING: winsock2.h: in the future, the
> compiler will take precedence

I think this is a hint that maybe more than one compiler is in your PATH. 
Also, in the later "make", some cyg* command speaks up. Do you have an 
additional cygwin environment set up? If yes, then in the MSYS shell before 
starting install.sh you should modify the PATH variable so that the cygwin 
stuff is *not* in the PATH. Also, in "make", a "lib" program is being 
called... this is probably either from cygwin or from yet another compiler 
(MSVC?). In either case, you should set the PATH in the shell before calling 
install.sh so that no other compiler environment will be found from the PATH.

Thanks a lot for the feedback - I'm curious to hear how this continues when 
you change the PATH accordingly.

> make  all-am
> make[4]: Entering directory
> `/c/GnuCash/tmp/guile-1.6.8/libguile-ltdl/upstream'
^^^ This tells you we're still busy compiling guile-1.6.8

> /bin/sh ../libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc  -g -O2 -Wall
> -Wmissing-prototypes -fno-strict-aliasing  -lwsock32
> -L/c/GnuCash/readline/lib -L/c/GnuCash/regex/lib -lregex -no-undefined
> -o libguile-ltdl.la -rpath c:/GnuCash/guile/lib -version-info 1:1:0
> -export-dynamic -no-undefined guile-ltdl.lo  -lcrypt -lm
> cygpath: can't convert empty path
^^^ The "cygpath" program shouldn't show up during this mingw-hosted build.

> *** Warning: linker path does not have real file for library -lwsock32.
^^^ All these mean the setup of the mingw environment and/or libtool went 
wrong. In the mingw version that is being downloaded by install.sh, all 
expected shared libraries should be available.

Christian