Building on Windows - status update

[Wm Tarr]

On 06/05/2014 20:51, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Continuing the effort to improve the build experience on Windows. 

the README at
https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash-on-windows [1]
doesn't reflect recent changes and presumes reading of this list.

[1] I presume the gnucash repository is preferred over gjanssens now

I suggest renaming the existing README and replacing it with something 
along the lines of the basic instructions from Geert's recent posting, viz
===

- 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

===

Which should be enough to get most people started if not all the way there.  I see some work is being done as I write but my idea is if someone uses a browser to get to the www repository and (being a sensible citizen) starts with the README things should be fairly self contained (i.e. they won't *have* to come back here) from then on.

I think the existing README should be renamed (with an extension .old?) rather than replaced entirely as it contains useful pointers if one gets stuck and knows what to look for.

Other thoughts:

As things are changing fairly quickly at the moment is the presumption in
  bootstrap_win_dev.vbs
that I've got both
  gnucash-on-windows.git
  gnucash.git
a good sign that they don't need to be updated?  It isn't as though they are particularly large.  At the moment I'm grabbing gnucash-on-windows every time I build but leaving gnucash alone as that will have changed less and it is the Win bit we're playing with.  Good practice or not?

The build is generating a lot of warnings e.g.
   libtool ... seems to have moved
that the user doesn't really need to see.  I'm probably going to run my install.sh with output to a file from now on.  Is anyone else already doing this?

I mentioned this in another message but it looks like both Geert and I are running WinXP (SP3 here, I'm presuming the same for G) and it looks like we're the only ones with (recent) successful builds so far.

It is up to you, Geert, but it might be of interest to encourage other folks attempts regardless of success in a thread to see if non-WinXP users are coming across a common set of barriers.


-- 
Wm