Re: Java-GTK on Windows (was: Re: [Java-gnome-developer] GConf assertion failures)

[Nicholas R. <ni...@mo...>]

On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 03:11 +0100, Lars Weber wrote:
> Hi (again) everyone,
> 
> > PS: speaking of GConf, does there exist any experience with using
> > GConf-Java under Windows?  Is it known or at least expected to work or
> > should I expect there to be major problems and therefore maybe switch to
> > use something else?
> 
> since nobody answered this earlier question let me ask it again in more
> general terms: what kind of difficulties should we expect when trying to
> develop an application with java-gnome (most importantly -gtk) that runs
> out-of-the-box on Windows?  How much experience is there with Windows as
> a target platform?
> 
> GConf-support we could actually live without but easy installation on
> Windows is pretty close to a must-have...

a pure java, gtk-java application should run "out-of-the-box" on windows
(baring, perhaps, some path issues).  note, however, the small problem
with the windows build of gtk-java described below.

As for windows as a target platform, you might find this wiki page
interesting.

http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/bin/view/Main/WindowsCompilation

I'm not sure that it has been updated in a while, but it's a place to
start.

Once you have the bindings compiled for windows, there was one
outstanding issue (if i remember correctly) that prevented a complete
out-of-the-box usage.  See the FAQ at the end of the wiki page mentioned
above.  The 2nd response to the last question (about incompatible jar
files) describes this issue a bit.  basically, as far as i understood
the problem at the time, there was an incompatibility/inconsistency
between the names of the libraries on the 2 platforms.  this meant we
needed to load the JNI libraries calling System.loadLibrary with a
platform dependent string.  thus the jar files compiled on linux would
not work if simply copied to a windows box.  you have to use the windows
compiled jars on windows and the linux compiled jars on linux.  this is
obviously not the ideal situation (especially for distributing a
gtk-java application).  however, i'm confident that someone with a bit
more automake experience would be able to find an acceptable
solution....

hope this helps,
nick