windows – Matthew Petroff https://mpetroff.net mpetroff.net Wed, 30 Nov 2016 02:31:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 On Building for Windows https://mpetroff.net/2014/12/on-building-for-windows/ https://mpetroff.net/2014/12/on-building-for-windows/#respond Sun, 14 Dec 2014 23:51:36 +0000 http://mpetroff.net/?p=1671 Continue reading →]]> Having been a long-time user of free and open source software, I began giving back to the community in the summer of 2010 by producing Windows builds for Hugin, after the project had gone four releases without a Windows build. This was followed a year later by Windows builds for FontForge. At the time, I was a Windows user who occasionally dabbled with Linux. I created the builds so I could use them, but also shared them with the community. In the fall of 2012, roughly two years after I began building for Windows, I switched primarily to Linux but still ran Windows XP on a laptop. When Microsoft ended support for Windows XP this spring, I stopped using Windows altogether, since it became a security risk. My Windows use is now limited to the occasional use of virtual machines. As my use of Windows declined, so did my interest in building for it. First, I stopped building FontForge, and now I’ve stopped building Hugin.

Compared to Linux, building on Windows is a real pain. Linux’s package manager takes care of all the dependencies, so building a piece of software only involves building that piece of software. Building on Windows, on the other hand, requires building all the dependencies and any sub-dependencies, before one can build the piece of software that one wants to build. While much of these built dependencies can be reused between releases, there is no standard location for accessing these dependencies, unlike on Linux, so configuring the build is much more time consuming. Additionally, Windows’ lack of a package manager induces further headaches when trying to integrate Python support, as one can’t just specify it as a automatically resolved dependency as on Linux.

As I write this, my Windows builds of Hugin have been downloaded over 1.4 million times, and my builds of FontForge have been downloaded around 350 thousand times. If even only a very small fraction of those users responsible for the downloads contributed back to the community because of the downloads, I think the time I’ve spent creating the builds has been a good thing. That being said, I no longer plan on producing builds for Windows, as I can no longer justify the time and effort.

]]> https://mpetroff.net/2014/12/on-building-for-windows/feed/ 0 Introducing Unofficial FontForge Windows Binaries https://mpetroff.net/2011/10/introducing-unofficial-fontforge-windows-binaries/ https://mpetroff.net/2011/10/introducing-unofficial-fontforge-windows-binaries/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:17:22 +0000 http://www.mpetroff.net/?p=267 Continue reading →]]> I have recently been working on creating a font using FontForge, an open source font editor. Unfortunately, using FontForge on Windows is somewhat spotty, since it needs an X Server to run and is only officially distributed in source code form. While prior Windows builds exist, they are neither up-to-date nor user friendly. This prior work did, however, provide a good starting point for creating a new build (with the help of Google Translate and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine).

After downloading the development package and following the directions, I was eventually able to reproduce the older build it was designed for. Next, I updated the build environment, scripts, and patches to the latest versions and was able to produce a new build.

I had now addressed the issue of currency, but still had the problem of user friendliness. In its current state, the package could not be installed, was launched via a batch file, had no icon, and presented a visible X Server to the user. First, I addressed the issue of the batch file by writing a small program that runs without a window and runs the batch file without opening a command window. Next, I adjusted the settings used to start the X Server, so it would not be visible. Then was the icon issue. Using the Oxygen Project‘s FontForge icon and my prior work on Hugin‘s file and installer icons, I created icons and added them the the launch program I had just written. Finally, I created an installer based on Hugin’s installer.

In the end, I had an up-to-date version of FontForge that could be installed and run just like any other piece of software without any of the complexities exposed to the end user. With both issues resolved, I set about documenting and sharing my work. See the results for yourself: FontForge-Windows.

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