[GNC-dev] Building on Windows

[Geert Janssens]

Op maandag 26 augustus 2019 18:32:40 CEST schreef John Ralls:
> > On Aug 26, 2019, at 1:49 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be>
> > wrote:> 
> > Op zaterdag 24 augustus 2019 19:40:06 CEST schreef Matthew Forbis:
> >> I was running gnucash directly from the inst directory and not creating
> >> an
> >> installer first.  This explanation makes sense.
> > 
> > There you go.
> > 
> > It would be nice though to be able to run directly from the inst directory
> > while debugging as it saves time not having to recreate a bundle for each
> > iteration.
> > 
> > Frankly I believe this shows how little actual development really happens
> > on Windows. Because of that the development experience is not really
> > optimized on that platform. With you actively doing so, it may be helpful
> > to share your experiences so we may make it more attractive for other
> > Windows oriented contributors.
> 
> Has anyone tried Windows Subsystem for Linux
> (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10)? That might be
> a less painful development environment for Windows users at least in the
> short term.
> 
I haven't tried it - as far as I know it's not available on Win7.

But as others have already pointed out there are limitations:
- from what I have heard it doesn't support GUI applications very well (yet). 
It is said to be more oriented towards command line utilities.
- WSL is a virtual machine, so you'd be running a linux application in a VM, 
not a native application. Granted, the VM is deeply integrated in Windows so 
for many users the difference may be hardly noticeable.

> Longer term I think we need to figure out how to make GnuCash buildable in
> Visual Studio. Recent releases provide for a Clang toolchain as well as the
> standard MSVC++ one. We might be able to create a build environment
> combined with vcpkg (https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg) that would be more
> stable, offer a lower barrier to entry, and generate windows-understandable
> debug info.

That would indeed be a more interesting approach. Would that mean we'd have to 
build the gnucash dependencies in VS as well ? (Aqbanking, guile, webkit,...) 
Or can VS code link to code built with mingw ? If the latter we could 
transition in phases: first get GnuCash built and run on VS, while keeping the 
dependencies as they are, then gradually migrate dependencies (if we want to 
have the same debug benefits there).

Regards,

Geert