Re: Packaging Windows apps so as not to require separate GNUstep install

[Fred Kiefer]

Am 13.07.2010 19:54, schrieb Eric Wasylishen:
> Hi,
> Earlier this year I was working on porting a Cocoa app to windows
> (http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2010/04/heres-toetag.html). There's
> still a bit left to do before it's ready to release, but I was
> wondering if anyone has investigated packaging Windows apps so they
> can installed without requiring a separate step of installing GNUstep.
> 
> I can think of three potential approaches:
> 1. the approach GTK apps use. When you install Pidgin, for instance,
> if you don't have the GTK runtime environment installed it will
> automatically download and install it, so it's more or less
> transparent to the user. Then, if you install other GTK apps they
> should reuse the installed copy.
> 
> 2. a normal installer which installs a private copy of the GNUstep
> libraries in the application's directory.
> 
> 3. "portable applications" - i.e., you just unzip a zip file, or run
> the application inside it's app directory on a USB drive, and it works
> on any computer.

I don't see that big difference between the last two proposals. If the
installer puts everything inside the application directory than a simple
zip file will do just the same.

A few years ago I packaged up an application that way, just for
demonstration purposes. GNUstep has changed a lot since then, but the
whole process should still be similar. Just a few configuration names
may have changed. If you have problems with this approach I might be
able to dig up the virtual Windows machine an have a look inside the
application directory.

Fred