pcb-rnd on windows

We have a pack in beta testing. It should work on any windows version from 7 up. (It does _not_ work on XP.)

IMPORTANT: if you use the windows version of pcb-rnd, please send me an email to: pcb-rnd-win (at) igor2.repo.hu

I will use this for sampling user demand. If there are no emails, that means there are no windows users which means it is not worth investing time in compiling windows releases.

1. download the binary pack and install

Download a -win32.zip from the binary releases page

Unpack the zip anywhere, and run pcb-rnd from bin:

IMPORTANT: Please make sure there's no space in the full path where you unpack.

2. limitations

pcb-rnd is a package designed for UNIX. The windows port does not change the UNIX aspect of pcb-rnd, thus a few things are different from a normal windows application:

The usual pcb-rnd policies apply:

There are a few limitations specific to the current windows pack:

These limitations are specific some special cases and oddities in windows:

3. Cross compilation from Linux to win32

(developers may need this, if you are an user, it is safe to skip.)

There is an svn repo that hosts all the sources for the dependencies. From this, the binary DLLs can be compiled (this step may need some manual intervention, autotools is not very nice for cross compilation). The result is the "ultimate hidlib dependency pack" (uhdp), 90+ megabytes of dlls with gtk, glib, gettext and whatnot.

The uhdp has two versions: the smaller one, with the dlls only, is part of the pack downloaded by end users for installation. The bigger one, called the developer pack, also contains the installed headers, .a and .la files and can be used as "sysroot" for cross-compiling pcb-rnd (or other software) against.

The uhdp can be donwloaded from http://repo.hu/projects/hidlib.w32

The normal process is: