Re: BTW

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 2005-07-13 07:06:22 +0100 Lloyd Dupont <lloyd@nova-mind.com> wrote:

> I could see there is an update of the libraries (base is now 1.10.3 & GUI 
> is 
> now 0.9.5) but the windows installer hasen't been updated.
>
> what could I do about that?

I don't know ... perhaps contact the people who provided the installer 
directly.  Perhaps you could update the installer and provide a newer 
version?

> Tomorrow I might try the following: download the sources, update my 
> installation compiled from source, (try to update to latest GCC as well), 
> recompile. would it be ok?

Well ... I don't know about the 'latest' GCC ... but if you use the latest 
GNUstep code from CVS, and follow the instructions for MinGW in the 
GNUstep-make package exactly (ie use the same versions of 
mingw,msys,gcc,libraries), you should end up with a working system.  I know 
Nicola has done that in the last couple of days, and I updated from CVS not 
long ago and ended up with a working system, so those instructions work (at 
least on windows-xp).

I would recommend getting a working version using that procedure before 
trying to vary anything by using different versions of tools and libraries.

> In case no one knows I'll keep you informed....
>
> BTW reading the website to try to find what has changed: I stumbled many 
> times on this uninformative cryptive description: "Minor bugfixe from MingW 
> report."
>
> How is the 'minority' determined?

I don't know of many such descriptions ... but I would imagine it's a 
personal judgement, and usually means that the code change is small/obvious 
if you look at it.  Of course, if it happens to fix a persistent crash in 
your particualr application, it might not be minor for you.

> For example I'm sure there is some memory corruption with 1.10.1 (leading 
> to 
> regular random crash), could these 'minor' bugfixes, repair my 
> application's 
> crashes?

Maybe ... you need to look at the changes to find out.  Simpler, if there 
are a *lot* of changes you are interested in, might be just to update to 
latest CVS version and try it.
Where do you think this memory corruption is?  I think the base library is 
very good at not corrupting memory on gnu/linux as I have a lot of preograms 
which use the base library and which I fairly frequently run under valgrind. 
 The gui and backend libraries are less well tested, but still pretty good.  
That being said, there are variations for running under windows, so there 
could be system specific memory corruption issues, and I know of no good 
free tool like valgrind for windows which would let us find them.  I believe 
that the commercial product 'purify' is comparable to valgrind, but as I'm 
not a windows programmer (I just use it occasionally to fix/test 
gnustep-base issues on mingw), I'm not likely to pay for a copy.


> (and why not update the windows installer when the only changes where 
> windows 
> related?)
>
>
> That makes me think, recently there was a discussion about the importance 
> of 
> the Windows port. Unfortunately I see no one seems to be interested in 
> doing 
> it .... :-( (well all motivated, geek kind of Windows developpers, are 
> doing 
> ..NET at the moment, that might be the reason...)

Guess so.  As far as I know, none of the core GNUstep developers use windows 
at all ... apart from booting it up occasionally in order to port gnustep as 
a good-will gesture to the windows users out there.  That's really why the 
windows port goes so slowly ... it's largely powered by people who don't use 
(and don't want to use) windows.  I think we would all like the windows 
stuff to improve, and are all eager to help windows developers in improving 
it ... but we do need those windows developers.