[crossfire] gtk-v2 on MS Windows

[Olivier Huet]

Hello,


Yes I was talking about the "official" Windows client (gtk1 client build with gtk2).

The problem of that one is that it's very slow and there is a lot of latency if you are in more than 13x13 (or perhaps 14x14), and especially when you are in a dark place.

On the gtk2 version, there is an OpenGL and SDL display mode : with those mode, it's very smooth and reactive at 25x25.


And to compile the Windows MinGW gtk2 client at its actual state, it's not so hard : the hard part is to setup a build environment : 

- I did found a website of another project with some details of what package and library to install / extract : http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/WinGtkHowto.html 

- in addition to that site, there is a bug in installation of MinGW : u have to copy cc1.exe and other files near at the same place as gcc.exe. 

- If you are on windows Vista, you have to remove uac or at least the "autodetection of application install and ask privilege elevation" because when you use "make install", it calls some executables named "install" and it results in access denied.

- I had to put the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH /mingw/lib/pkgconfig in MinGW shell (msys)

- To build SDL, there is a howto on SDL website

- For SDL_image, the configure / make / make install works well too

- after that, the actual configure / make of crossfire gtk2 works well.

- And to have personnal config files to be taken, you have to copy executable and "themes" directory on the same place and launch it outside of MinGW shell.

- (be sure to configure it in OpenGL if you have hardware OpenGL video driver, or SDL else because the pixmap renderer is as slow as in gtk1 version of cf client)


Best Regards,
Olivier (findufin & findragon on metalforge)


-----Message d'origine-----
De : crossfire-bounces at metalforge.org [mailto:crossfire-bounces at metalforge.org] De la part de Nicolas Weeger
Envoyé : samedi 21 juillet 2007 10:30
À : Crossfire Discussion Mailing List
Objet : Re: [crossfire] gtk-v2 on MS Windows

Hello.

> It was really great : slightly faster and cooler than slow (on 
> Windows) gtk
> 1 client.

Note that, if you're using the "official" Windows client, it is the GTK1 client built with GTK2.

> I recently try to use again crossfire and was quite surprised that 
> this client is still not on "officials ones", so I did try to compile 
> actual svn sources and it didn't compile because a new use of 
> "scandir" function that is not present in MinGW. I did wrote a little 
> substitute for this with more standard unices functions that are 
> present in MinGW (opendir / readdir ...). I did bracket this 
> substitute with "#ifdef WIN32" but that should works on unix os without scandir in the same way.
>
> --> see that patch in attachment file.
>
> Now it do compile well and run but is it still a continued client ?

As Mark said, Windows support isn't always up to date and lacking.
I am (was?) the "official" Windows maintainer, and I've always built everything through MS's Visual Studio.
Building the GTK1 client is a real mess, a weird process where you rename randomly files, copy and change names, change functions, and weird things like that.
Therefore I didn't really want to try to build the GTK2 client. I also feel, maybe because I don't use it, that it isn't as advanced as the GTK1 client - from my point of view, GTK1 is still the official client ^_-


Thanks for the patch, and the remainder :)


As a note, I think patches are better on the Sourceforge tracker at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=13833&atid=313833 instead of buried in the forum (tracker makes it easier to follow things)


Nicolas
--
http://nicolas.weeger.free.fr [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'aléatoire !]