gEDA-dev: FYI: windows build attempt from s.e.design

[Peter Clifton]

On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 13:53 -0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> I wish we (me included) could be more helpful to people trying to
> build our stuff on windows.
> 
> Maybe something for the code sprint?

[snip]
> Please believe me, I am trying not to be a pain/stupid here......
> 
> I read around amongst the readme's for gEDA PCB, downloaded cygwin/gtk
> +/NSIS installed them all and after some leaps of faith and guessing I
> managed to get the build going, but it bails out regarding the not
> being able to find a new enough version of gtk+ (wants greater the
> 2.4.0), but I downloaded and as far as I can make out from the
> instruction supplied the latest version.

You possibly need to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH to where you can find the
"*.pc" installed along with GTK. When cross-compiling I had to manually
edit (ok, with perl) the paths in these .pc files to match where I
unzipped the windows GTK. If compiling natively, I believe the windows
port of pkg-config munges these its-self.

[snip]
> Please, is there someone out there who can give me a hand on building
> this?
> 
> If I can get it built, I would even happily upload the finished NSIS
> for others and in fact if its as good as it looks I'll even keep a
> regular eye on gEDA releases and build each of the new ones and
> upload.

I've recently built (with Dan's help fixing some stuff) a Win32 version
of PCB. I cheated a little, and didn't build the "PNG" exporter support,
but otherwise it works. (I'm sure the PNG exporter would work too, its
just a few less depends to fetch).

There are a few fixes I recently committed to CVS which make drawing
operations for rectangles / square pads work correctly in win32 so
you'll want those.

I cross-compiled from linux with mingw. A native build under MSYS could
be easier, but would have required me to download a lot of build depends
(I'll post the cut down build script just to make the NSIS installer if
people want, its basically the build script but without the bits for
compiling / installing).

If you cross-compile, you have to hack the NSIS build script, and copy
the generated footprint library from a native build of PCB, into the
win32 build.

I used the Pidgin compiled version of GTK to save time, found at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/ downloads,
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235&package_id=119698

I could have used Tor Lillqvist's packages, but I ended up trying Pidgin
after what turned out to be an unrelated problem.


I've also cross-compiled most of gEDA for win32 (needs some patches),
but this works less well out of the box. Getting a working version of
guile was a major hurdle, as was figuring out where to put everything to
keep the cross-compile going. I don't mind giving pointers, but I don't
have a recipe for this one.


Oh - it all works, but anything which relies on calling a bash script
will fail. This means no M4 footprints in PCB, and from gsch2pcb. There
may be other cases I've not spotted, as I've not myself used the port
extensively - it was more of an exercise in feasibility.

I do have some students who may be using the PCB port for laying out
power electronics though.

Regards,

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)