Re: Observations and Issues With Gstep Win32

[Christopher Armstrong]

Hi Morgan

> - It is *very* slow on Win32 (Win XP).  I have Win XP also running on a
> virtual machine using Parallels, and other operations are quite snappy.
>  But the program operation is about 10-fold slower on Windows.  I don't
> know why... The processor intensive stuff has been highly optimized to
> minimize objective-C message passing, so I don't think it's due to
> that.  Any ideas?  For this I am using the downloadable installer
> version of Gnustep.  As I am writing this, I am now attempting a
> compile/install of Gnustep from SVN on windows, and have all fingers
> crossed that this won't turn into chaos.
>   

There's the possibility that the slow program operation could be due to 
mingw. I guess if you were able to profile the code, it may be possible 
to port significant parts to native Window's API's. Also, IIRC, 
Microsoft's C runtime (MSVCRT, used by mingw) has extensive heap 
checking facilities (amongst other things) that may be turned on either 
in the compiled GNUstep binaries (or possibly your own code). I do 
believe these impact performance significantly. Try "make -n" to see 
what's being compiled into your programme (caution: long output).
> - I cannot figure out how to compile Gnustep apps (e.g. mine or
> ProjectCenter) so that they can be double-clicked in Windows explorer,
> or even run at a windows command prompt.  It always complains that the
> ".dll" files are missing.  I've done a lot of Googling on this, and
> come up empty.  I've seen claims that this is possible, but never seen
> any instructions as to how.  Any pointers would be appreciated.  I am
> not very Windows savvy - I have managed to mostly avoid it...
>   
GNUstep applications need to be started from the msys shell on Windows 
using "openapp" as you do on Linux/etc, after having sourced the 
GNUstep.sh file. We (unfortunately) do not have an environment yet that 
will let you simply compile stand-alone applications, although there are 
a few people on this list who have managed to get standalone apps built 
for Windows.

> - I tried to get GDB working under Win32 to try to debug a small issue
> I was having with my program.  I got it downloaded and installed, but
> it wouldn't recognize objective-c sources... This is version 5.2.1.  It
> would just run my program, pop up a second window briefly, then come
> back saying "program has exited with status 1".  It would not let me do
> a backtrace or etc.  Has anyone gotten gdb to work with objective-c
> under Win32?
>   
gdb is still difficult to use on Windows; I'm trying to find a version 
myself that works correctly so I can do some proper backend. You will 
need gdb >= 6.0 for proper Objective-C debugging support, but many of 
the binaries at www.mingw.org can be buggy. Is there anyone on the list 
who knows of a gdb version for Windows that works correctly when 
debugging GNUstep apps.

Regards
Christopher Armstrong
carmstrong at fastmail dot com dot au