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RE: ORBit install


Glen Rice wrote:

> I am trying to install ORBit and I read the directions
> I found in the ported software section on the CYGWIN 
> website.  It said to install ORBit run make with skipping
> the test directory.
> How do I do this?
> Thank you,
> Glenn Rice 

I have been working on a port of Gnome to cygwin for some time now. The site
you got these instructions from (I guess
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley/1596/en/cygwin.html) does not say
whether any of the packages pass their own test suites. In the case of ORBit
this is a serious issue because the idl compiler generated by compiling
unpatched sources is badly broken on cygwin, and so the tests do not even
build correctly. The problem is that memory alignment of multiword datatypes
on Windows does not fit the pattern expected by the ORBit source code. So,
for example, any IDL interface containing a double will be incorrectly
compiled.

I have patches for ORBit and most of the other Gnome libraries that produce
DLLs rather than static libraries, and pass their test suites.
Unfortunately, this does not guarantee that they are correct. I have just
one library left to get working, then I will be able to build a reasonable
selection of apps and use them to find any remaining bugs (and I am sure
there will be many).

The problem library in gnome-vfs, where there appears to be problems with
thread mutexes, although I really have not been able to debug this at all.

Still, the control-center and gnome-core build OK so I can get a Gnome
desktop up, even if I am getting lots of errors generated. Most of
gnome-games builds and runs OK too, so there's some reward for my efforts at
least!

I would like to make my work available to the cygwin community at large,
hopefully so that someone who understands cygwin thread management better
can get a handle on the faults with gnome-vfs. As this is just a hobby and I
get no more than a few hours a month to work on it, I would be happy to hand
over to anyone who is interested to take on proper maintenance of these
packages and can make them available on the web. Please reply to this
mailing list, *not* to me personally.

Steven O'Brien


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