Building on Windows from scratch - follow up

[John Ralls]

On Apr 28, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:

> This weekend I have spent more time on getting the Windows build running 
> with more recent mingw compilers (gcc 4.8).
> 
> This is a continuation of the work I have started in December last year.
> 
> Current status:
> - I have forked packaging/win32 into a separate directory with the clear 
> goal of decoupling the maintenance of a build environment on Windows 
> from gnucash releases. This repository is currently publicly accessible 
> from my personal github account:
> https://github.com/gjanssens/gnucash-on-windows
> Ultimately it is my goal to bring this repository under the GnuCash 
> project umbrella but not everything is working yet (more on that later).
> - The install and dist scripts have been updated so that a working 
> gnucash installer can be built in the new mingw environment. Up until 
> yesterday afternoon gnucash installed by the installer worked as well. I 
> haven't tested the build with the new c++ changes yet.
> 
> What's still missing:
> - the scripts for the build server need some tweaking in order to build 
> tags under the new configuration.
> - improve documentation
> - set up desktop icon for msys.
> 
> Future plans:
> - fix the build server scripts
> - reduce build overhead by smartening the install scripts
> 
> Wild, halfbaked ideas for the long term:
> - switch to mingw64 [1] and win-builds [2]
> - package the gnucash dependencies for win-builds and reduce setting the 
> gnucash environment to running the win-builds package manager
> 
> Lastly, how to use my repository ?
> - Download the bootstrap_win_dev.vbs script. It has some documentation 
> at the beginning. Running it is mostly a double-click. This will prepare 
> a c:\gcdev directory with the minimal tools required to run install.sh
> - Start msys (c:\gcdev\mingw\msys\1.0\msys.bat)
> - cd /c/gcdev/gnucash-on-windows.git
> - install.sh
> and if you want to create the windows installer as well:
> - dist.sh
> 
> Please test and provide feedback.

Yay! I'll pull it and start a build soon.

Maybe we should make a new gnucash-packaging repo for this and gnucash-on-osx.

For wild, not even in the oven yet, for the very long term, how about "build GC native in MSVC"?

Regards,
John Ralls