quick note about running GCstar (collection manager) on Win32 (x64)

GCstar homepage

project is hosted on GitLab

current version is in the Test branch

win32 full-featured installer are not available anymore :-(

requirements for running without the bundle installer:

• Perl for Windows (e.g. Strawberry Perl)
• GTK+ for Windows runtime (e.g. http://gtk-win.sourceforge.net/home/index.php/Main/Downloads)
• mandatory: Perl-Gtk2 (e.g. precompiled, instructions here: http://linux.campacasa.eu/Perl-Gtk2_on_Windows)
• optional: various Perl modules (can be compiled and installed from CPAN in case of Strawberry Perl)

once installed and can run, packaging as an executable is possible (by using patched packages/win32/createExe.bat).

details

mandatory prerequisits

1. install Strawberry Perl: http://strawberryperl.com/download/5.24.0.1/strawberry-perl-5.24.0.1-64bit.msi create symlink (as admin): mklink c:\Perl c:\Strawberry\perl
2. install GTK+ for Windows runtime: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gtk-win/gtk2-runtime-2.24.10-2012-10-10-ash.exe?download
3. install precompiled Perl-Gtk2 from http://www.sisyphusion.tk/ppm/ by issuing:

ppm install http://www.sisyphusion.tk/ppm/Glib.ppd
ppm install http://www.sisyphusion.tk/ppm/Cairo.ppd
ppm install http://www.sisyphusion.tk/ppm/Pango.ppd
ppm install http://www.sisyphusion.tk/ppm/Gtk2.ppd

installing GCstar

1. get latest release (1.7.1 at the time of writing): https://gitlab.com/Kerenoc/GCstar/repository/Test/archive.tar.gz
2. unpack tarball: tar xzvf gcstar-1.7.1.tar.gz (for tar and others using Cygwin is recommended)
3. run perl app by cmdline:

perl gcstar\bin\gcstar

or create shortcut and in properties prepend C:\Strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe in target field.

optional requirements (extra perl modules for full functionality):

note, that the perl script install shows missing modules. installing those modules by cpan seems to be straightforward:

cpan install Date::Calc
cpan install DateTime::Format::Strptime
cpan install GD::Graph::area
cpan install GD::Graph::bars
cpan install GD::Graph::pie
cpan install GD::Text
cpan install MP3::Info
cpan install MP3::Tag
cpan install Net::FreeDB
cpan install Ogg::Vorbis::Header::PurePerl

unfortunately the last two install cmds failed (probably not compatible with the installed Perl version).

packaging GCstar as a standalone exe

install Perl Packer (pp):

cpan install PAR::Packer

takes very long time, and probably needs user interaction (closing a color selector dialog at a test).

go into gcstar\bin directory and issue (note that the two modules failed to install above are omitted):

pp -o gcstar.exe -g -B ^
  -M filetest ^
  -M Glib::Object::Subclass ^
  -M locale ^
  -M Digest::MD5 ^
  -M MIME::Base64 ^
  -M LWP ^
  -M LWP::Simple ^
  -M LWP::UserAgent ^
  -M Net::SMTP ^
  -M URI::Escape ^
  -M HTTP::Cookies::Netscape ^
  -M HTML::Entities ^
  -M Gtk2::SimpleList ^
  -M Text::Wrap ^
  -M XML::Simple ^
  -M MP3::Info ^
  -M MP3::Tag ^
  -M DateTime::Format::Strptime ^
  -M Archive::Tar ^
  -M Archive::Zip ^
  -M Compress::Zlib ^
  -M Time::Piece ^
  -M Getopt::Long ^
  -M FindBin ^
  -M Gtk2::Gdk::Keysyms ^
  -M Unicode::Normalize ^
  -M GD ^
  -M GD::Text ^
  -M GD::Graph::bars ^
  -M GD::Graph::area ^
  -M GD::Graph::pie ^
  -M Date::Calc ^
  -a "..\lib\gcstar;lib" ^
  -a "..\share\gcstar;share" ^
  --link=C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Cairo\Cairo.dll ^
  --link=C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Glib\Glib.dll ^
  --link=C:\Perl\site\lib\auto\Gtk2\Gtk2.dll ^
  -vvv ^
  gcstar

--> gcstar.exe standalone executable (which means it does not require Perl + GTK) is almost ready.

changing the icon and updating version info with this perl script:

use Win32::Exe;
$exe = Win32::Exe->new('gcstar.exe');
$exe->update( icon => '../share/gcstar/icons/GCstar.ico',
              info => [ 'FileDescription=GCstar, Personal Collections Manager', 'FileVersion=1.7.1',
                        'ProductName=GCstar', 'ProductVersion=1.7.1',
                        'Comments=http://www.gcstar.org', 'LegalCopyright=GNU GPL'] );

perl update_version_info.pl

WARNING: do not run update_version_info.pl. Win32::Exe (or the archive management) seems to be broken. the output exe is corrupted.

TODO: find a way to update icon and version info.

A resulting win32 (x64) binary for version 1.7.1 (09/0/2016) is available in the repo for download:

gcstar-1.7.1.exe

the binary depends on the outdated 1.7.1 release tarball and must be placed in gcstar/bin folder.

the binary has been assembled using:

• Windows 7 Professional x64
• Strawberry Perl 5.24.0.1
• GTK2+ for Windows runtime 2.24.10-2012-10-10-ash
• PAR Packager, version 1.035 (PAR version 1.010)