Re: [Gnumed-devel] Gnumed on Windows Xp

[Tim Churches]

Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> You report the exact same error I am seeing on my box. These problems don't 
> surprise me. Noone has ever put GNUmed to the test on Windows for the last 
> few years it seems. None of these problems appear on GNU/Linux which is 
> recommended anyway. My testing makes me believe that once we solve the diplay 
> update problem we are good to go. It is a fundamental problem. But the main 
> problem is that Karsten does not have access to a Windows box and relies on 
> me to test and test and test. 

OK, glad to know it is not just my stupidity (which is a quite likely
explanation for most things...). However, my feeling is that unless
GNUmed works well on Windows, you'll never attract a big enough user
base to justify the investment of reources (voluntary and funded) which
GNUmed deserves. The reality is that the vast majority of medical
practices use Windows, not Linux.

> We will figure it out for sure but if you have the nerve try the GNU/Linux 
> version. Installation is painless. Sure Windows ans Linux could be smarter 
> (detecting python versions & more ) but that has no priority.

I agree that the installation on Windows is painless - it took me about
5 minutes, including downloading and installing all the requisite
packages (and uninstalling Python 2.4 which I already had on my Windows
box, although I probably didn't need to uninstall). By contrast, I still
can't get wxWidgets to work on my Fedora Core 2, 3 or 4 systems.

> The Windows installer build process is script based. The script is in CVS.
> On Windows and linux rebuilding the installer takes only a few minutes of 
> your 
> time since I have created a build environment. It has not been documented 
> yet. 
> 
> Thanks for testing. I will announce updates to the installer as soon as they 
> appear. BTW. Again. GNU/Linux tgz is complete and works as far as I know. 
> Please test. Please use savannah's issue tracker if if you find gluitches.

It is wxWidgets on Linux which is the hassle. It's because I compiled
all sorts of versions of GTK on those machines to try to get a video
post-processing application working - but now wxWidgets refuses to
compile or install from an RPM. I think I need to re-install Linux (or
maybe try a Debian-based distro on a different partition). But life is
too short to constatntly swap or re-install Linux distros (well, mine is
likely to be, anyway).

Tim C