Re: Windows distribution viability

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Simon,


Simon Gornall wrote:
> I’ve been a Mac engineer for the last couple of decades, and now I 
> find myself looking at writing something that will work on both 
> Windows and the Mac. If it were just for me, (from reading around) I 
> think it’d be quite straightforward - just install MSYS, the GNUstep 
> packages, and start running with it, but I might want to distribute 
> this application in the future, and I’m cautious about requiring a 
> GNUstep install as a part of that, it seems like a reasonably high bar.

I distribute a windows Application regularly since years and will give 
you some details on my setup.

Until some years ago, MinGW of MSYS ("1") was our way to build on 
windows and distribute things. For that, we supplied NSIS installers for 
GNUstep core and developer tools. This allowed then to distribute your 
application the same way, using the GS core non-dev package as a 
requirement.
Unfortunately, while that environment still works, it is not really 
maintained anymore so we use MSYS2 and MinGW32 or MinGW64.
That one has an internal package manager system (pacman).

Maybe NSIS installers could be created also for MSYS2, but never delved 
into it.

So, an way to get things on windows is install all packages from the 
command line. You could in theory also make your app available such way. 
You need to supply inside the folder a specially crafted configuration file

There is however a third way, which is the currently the one I settled 
to: a self-contained folder. a GNUstep app will look first in system for 
libraries, but then also for the whole tree inside itself.

At the end, libraries are DLLs, so it is a matter of getting all paths 
and dependencies to work. MSYS and MINGW themselves are at core a main 
DLL for runtime purposes.

More details below.

It is very convenient, unzip and start. Of course it is a "fat" 
distribution and useful for one app, if you have more than one, you 
would end up duplicating things

> In fact, I’ll be using SDL (3, if it matters) for the graphics side 
> (which is cross-platform), what I’m really after here is the runtime 
> and Foundation framework that I’ve come to know and love - even better 
> if it has ARC :)

If you settle to the GCC runtime (no ARC) you get it ready as a package 
from pacman of msys. So it is a matter of installing deps and then just 
building gnustep core with "configure, make install" and then your own 
frameworks and apps.

In my app I use standard AppKit and for my needs the win32 backend is 
enough, the code is well portable. No need for SDL or C++, but YMMV.


Here a guide I wrote:
https://mediawiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Installation_MSYS2

If you want the libobjc2 runtime instead, you need additional steps to 
install it and additional dependencies.


> I have read a fair number of “it’s hard to get it working on Windows” 
> posts/articles but I’m hoping these are a bit self-selecting - people 
> who did struggle and wrote about it doesn’t mean that everyone 
> struggles… They’re also a bit older, and I’m (again) hoping things 
> keep improving :)

No getting it on windows it not that difficult, as proven. But depending 
on your method of distribution existing solutions may suit you or not.

I thus prepare an environment with GNUStep and there I install many 
frameworks and applications and run from the command line.

When I want to distribute, I run a script that packages and copies all 
things together and then removes things not needed. That part needs to 
be tweaked depending the dependency of each app and what your 
installation contains.

You can check
https://github.com/rmottola/DataBasin

There note two special files:

https://github.com/rmottola/DataBasin/blob/master/windows-GNUstep.conf
This represents the configuration to find the whole GNUstep distribution

This instead is the script, commented, I think you can understand it:
https://github.com/rmottola/DataBasin/blob/master/windows_package.sh

I tried to make it parametric... perhaps you just need to change APP_NAME :)

This copies also MINGW DLLs, so you end up with a folder where you can 
just launch your app with "double click" on the exe. Technicall a 
"snapshot".

There are minor details that can be discussed and improved, if you are 
interested in this method.

Riccardo