OS orientated development

[Wm Tarr]

While reading a recent thread here (the one on libgtk dependency) I 
wondered which OS gnc ended up on most.

Looking at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucash/files/gnucash%20%28stable%29/stats/os?dates=2012-02-06%20to%202012-05-03
(i.e. 2.4.10 stable until today) it appears to be Windows.

I tried a number of other time periods but Windows seems to be the main 
OS regardless.

I know there are other sources of gnc, for e.g. the one I use day to day 
comes from http://portableapps.com/
Perhaps many more people use the gnc from their *nix distro?  Do we have 
any stats for that?  I'm guessing not.

The thing I am thinking about is which version of the packages gnc 
depends on should be used?

I am aware some might see this as "fighting talk", I am certainly not 
intending to start an OS war (there are plenty of other places for that! )

What I am wondering about is how much is gnc "held back" by the 
stability of (say) libgtk on one platform?

If this discussion has already been done to death then I would like a 
pointer to the thread.

My aim (and that of some others) is a gnc with Python 2.7 (I can't see 
the need to leap to Python 3.x at the moment). The problem I (and 
possibly others) are finding is that the build involves sacrificing 
small animals, virgins and so on because it isn't clear which version of 
which package is required on which OS.

Surely
http://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/build-logs/build-trunk-2012-05-03.log
could include version numbers ... I'm prepared to write the sh code to 
show them if someone has a working combination.  We shouldn't really 
have to do it by trial and error since we know someone (the person that 
compiles the Win32 version) knows which versions of which packages they 
are using.

More generally, why, historically, is building gnc such a nightmare?  
Does it have to be that way?

Consider this: if a Python 2.7 compatible Windows version was built 
you'd get a whole load of Python people writing new reports and so on, 
that would enhance rather than detract from gnc, surely?

Are their a bunch of jealous guys protecting their bit of the code?  
That sort of thing has happened with other open source projects before.  
I hope it is not true of gnc.


-- 
Wm ...