Packaging an application with dependencies under Windows

Question

I've written an application using gtkmm and libpcap under Linux. Of course, gtkmm depends on GTK+.

After porting it to Windows and attempting to distribute it, the feedback I received is that there are too many dependencies to install.

The user has to run installers for the GTK+, gtkmm, and winpcap runtimes before they can run my little application, which admittedly is a pain.

GIMP for Windows seems to use an installer that launches a GTK+ installer if needed, but doing that for three different libraries seems a little excessive, especially in terms of the installer size.

Is there a better way to distribute this? I believe winpcap actually has to install a service, so it probably has to run the installer, but maybe I could bundle the GTK+/gtkmm libraries in the runtime folder?

I'm quite a bit more familiar with Linux development, so I'm not sure what the best course of action is.

Answer 1

I highly recommend using a tool like Advanced Installer to deal with this for you. Making a proper installer on windows is a real headache, so it's well worth your time to use a GUI tool to help you out. AI (and other installers, for that matter) can install and manage windows services, prerequisites, and so on, and in the long run you'll save a lot of time by using a tool like this to help with your deployment. Advanced Installer in particular has very good support for managing different dependencies, along with their associated versions, and it can also install a native Windows service during the install process. They have a freeware version, but depending on the nature of your product, you might want to spring for one of the commercial versions.

Basically, if you're serious about deploying on Windows, you should invest the time (and money, possibly) to make a proper MSI-style installer. Not to knock the NSIS crowd, but making non-standard Windows installers always results in a lot more work for the developer, and a more uncomfortable experience for the end user.

Answer 2

If you want to manually package the GTKmm runtime, see this link at gnome.org for more details (look under Redistributing). You can also silently run the GTKmm installer using the /S flag.