Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Gtk static linking

[Tim Mazid]

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> Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:29:14 +0200
> From: address@hidden
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Gtk static linking
>
> Martin Gerhardy schrieb:
> > maybe there should be an option to build it statically or dynamically? i
> > know that the guideline for mingw-cross-env is to build everything
> > statically linked, but i don't know whether this is a good idea for gtk
> > and related libs. people i've asked are more or less all saying the same
> > - bundle a gtk installation with your installer and don't try to link
> > statically. any suggestions, thoughts or ideas about this?
>
> You can certainly do this, but in that case you're better off using
> the official GTK builds rather than those of mingw-cross-env. That is,
> a switch to build a dynamically linked GTK libraries in mingw-cross-env
> wouldn't be that helpful. You couldn't use the generated DLL files anyway,
> because in the end of the day, your application will have to run with the
> official DLLs, not with ours.
>
> Also note that building GTK DLLs via mingw-cross-env would include the
> smaller dependency libs into the DLLs, which also will almost certainly
> cause trouble. That is, you would also have to build the GTK depedency
> libs dynamically. I don't think this is worth the trouble, especially
> since there already are official GTK builds out there.
>
> BTW, don't be confused by the "import *.lib" files. This is what the
> Microsoft tools need. For MinGW, you don't have to convert them to
> "*.a" files. You don't even have to use them at all! Any modern
> GCC/Binutils version is able to link directly to the *.dll files,
> without any need for any intermediate "import lib" crap.
>
> Having said that, note that I tried this successfully with some
> projects, but with other libs, i.e. not with GTK. So you might run
> into additional problems not yet covered here.
>
> Nevertheless, it would be great if you could report your experiences
> here. It would be great to have some section about GTK in the tutorial
> that covers static as well as dynamic linking for GTK applications
> in mingw-cross-env. This would finally resolve those frequently asked
> questions about cross-compiling GTK applications.
>
> In addition, it would also be great if some other mingw-cross-env
> users would report their experiences with GTK here. Is anyone using
> our static GTK variant successfully in some application?

I'm using it unsuccessfully, if that counts.

A gtkmm application crashes on start with the following:

$ wine gtkmm.exe 
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000001 at address 0xb22820 
(thread 0009), starting debugger...
Unhandled exception: page fault on read access to 0x00000001 in 32-bit code 
(0x00b22820).

I hope this isn't thread hijacking; that's not my intention.


Tim.

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