.. title: New Windows build environment
.. slug: new_windows_environment
.. date: 2010-08-13 16:38:02
.. tags: miro, work, dev

<p>
  I spent a good amount of time over the last few months migrating
  Miro on Windows to a new Windows build environment that uses Python
  2.6.5 and Visual C++ 9.0 (part of Visual Studio 2008).
</p>
<p>
  I landed the changes two weeks ago.  Janet, Ben and I identified a
  couple of problems and sorted those out.  Last week I got the Windows
  build box to produce nightlies without requiring any babysitting.
</p>
<p>
  Yay!
</p>
<p>
  Features of the new Windows build environment:
</p>
<ol>
<li>It's a lot easier to configure.  Previously, we had to set PATH,
  INCLUDE, and LIB environment variables to the right magic values to
  build correctly.  Python 2.6 automatically pulls those values from
  Visual Studio 2008 files.  So we don't need to deal with those
  anymore.

<li>It uses Visual C++ 9.0 (Visual Studio 2008) rather than VC++ 7.1
  (VS 2003).  The latter can no longer be acquired legally (thank you
  MS).  There's an Express version of the former available on the
  Microsoft site for free.

<li>We were using Python 2.5 which had a bunch of bugs we had
  workarounds for.  We're now using Python 2.6.5 which doesn't have
  these issues and also has a series of optimizations that should make
  Miro run better.

<li>There's a <code>get_requirements.sh</code> script that downloads
  the versions of Python and libraries that you need automatically.

</ol>
<p>
  This also means that we can require Python 2.6 or later on all platforms
  for Miro.  Therefore we can:
</p>
<ul>
<li>fix try/except blocks 
<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0352/">http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0352/</a>
<li>use with and contexts
<a href="http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.5/whatsnew/2.6.html#pep-343-the-with-statement">http://docs.python.org/release/2.6.5/whatsnew/2.6.html#pep-343-the-with-statement</a>
</ul>
<p>
  The one thing we still want to do is upgrade from gtk 2.16 to gtk
  2.20.  <a href="http://bugzilla.pculture.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14037">Bug
  14037</a> covers the problems here.  We're blocked
  by <a href="https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=625972">Bug
  625972</a> in gtk.
</p>
<p>
  I've written up instructions on setting up the new Windows build
  environment.  It takes me about 30 minutes to do--mostly because it
  takes a while to install Visual C++ 9.0 Express.  It's much easier
  to set up the new environment than the previous environment.  When I
  first started at PCF a few years ago, it took me a couple of days to
  get the Windows build environment working.
</p>
<p>
  For more details on the new Windows build environment, see 
<a href="https://develop.participatoryculture.org/trac/democracy/wiki/WindowsBuildDocs">the
  wiki page on WindowsBuildDocs</a>.
</p>