wxruby users - Jul 2004 - The great MSVC wxruby-swig bug hunt!

Hi everyone,

As Kevin has just announced, wxruby-swig has been moved into CVS as a 
toplevel project. It still is not in a "releasable" form yet, but it
now
builds on more systems than it doesn''t, and is moving towards
stability.
Because of the complexity of the build environment, we''re using rake 
(http://rake.rubyforge.org) as a build system instead of the standard 
extconf.rb file.

A lot of work has recently been put into getting wxruby-swig to build on 
Windows using the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (MSVC) tools. It now 
successfully builds (or should successfully build), but it isn''t 
running. We''re tracking what the problem is, but we could use some
help.

So all you ruby programmers with MSVC/wxWidgets knowledge, we''re
calling
out for help! Pull the head branch from CVS, break out the debuggers and 
help us figure out whats going wrong! Are we incorrectly initializing 
wxWidgets? Is SWIG generating bad code? Did we forget a semicolon? Any 
help is appreciated! (This is also a good time to comment on the new 
build system)

Nick

P.S. Note to MinGW programmers - wxruby-swig isn''t building on mingw 
(yet). It should be working by the end of the week.

Nick wrote:
> It now successfully builds (or should successfully build), but it
isn''t
> running. We''re tracking what the problem is, but we could use some
help.
For those of us without MS-Windows boxes, can you describe the symptoms 
of the bug(s) you''re seeing with wxruby-swig?

Thanks,

Kevin

Nick wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> As Kevin has just announced, wxruby-swig has been moved into CVS as a
> toplevel project. It still is not in a "releasable" form yet, but
it now
> builds on more systems than it doesn''t, and is moving towards
stability.
> Because of the complexity of the build environment, we''re using
rake
> (http://rake.rubyforge.org) as a build system instead of the standard
> extconf.rb file.
>
> A lot of work has recently been put into getting wxruby-swig to build on
> Windows using the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (MSVC) tools. It now
> successfully builds (or should successfully build), but it isn''t
> running. We''re tracking what the problem is, but we could use some
help.
>
> So all you ruby programmers with MSVC/wxWidgets knowledge, we''re
calling
> out for help! Pull the head branch from CVS, break out the debuggers and
> help us figure out whats going wrong! Are we incorrectly initializing
> wxWidgets? Is SWIG generating bad code? Did we forget a semicolon? Any
> help is appreciated! (This is also a good time to comment on the new
> build system)
One tip that may or may not be helpful...

When I was getting the old, non-swig version to run on Windows, I also ran
into problems where everything would compile, but it would not run. In my
case, I was building wxWidgets using the MSVC project files (i.e., I was
building it from the IDE) -- I could never get wxRuby work with this. When I
switched to using nmake wxWidget''s msvc makefiles, I finally got it
work.

Also, with wxRuby version 0.3.0, I tried switching to the vc++ 7.1 compiler
(from VS .NET 2003). This also compiled just fine but would not run. At that
point I was trying to get the release out as quickly as possible, so I
didn''t even try to figure it out -- I just went back to vc++ 6.0 and
that
worked, once again, without any problems.

Hope that helps.

Curt

Quoting Kevin Smith <wxruby@qualitycode.com>:
> Nick wrote:
> > It now successfully builds (or should successfully build), but it
isn''t
> > running. We''re tracking what the problem is, but we could use
some help.
>
> For those of us without MS-Windows boxes, can you describe the symptoms
> of the bug(s) you''re seeing with wxruby-swig?
Curt, I''ve been using MSVC 6.0 and wxWidgets 2.4.2 from makefiles.
Thanks for
the suggestions though.

The symptom is that wxRuby-swig crashes on load. I''ve loaded it into
the
Micosoft Debugging Tools for windows, and from what I can see it is being
caused by SWIG storing a pointer to a director as a pointer to the base class,
and then later trying to re-cast it back to it''s director type, which
fails.
There are a few open questions though:

1) Is wxWidgets initialized correctly? I had to write the MSVC App.i
initialization code, and I''m not confident I did it correctly. Somebody
with
lower wxWidgets experience should take a look.

2) Is SWIG really at issue here? It''s an easy target, but it''s
also possible I
didn''t get the proper arguments for MSVC to SWIG. Somebody should check
this
too.

3) Did I track the bug correctly? Somebody should double check this.

I''ll accept any help possible. I''d like to see wxruby-swig on
Windows soon!

Nick

Alright, I found out what was going on. I forgot to turn on RTTI in MSVC so SWIG
could work properly. There was also a mixup in App.i that wasn''t
kicking off
the main loop. So now MSVC has a wxruby-swig window!

I am still crashing on program exit (GC issue). I can''t get a MinGW
version to
build, but it''s because Rake won''t work with MSYS. I need to
send an email
their way to see if it''s ever been tested with the MinGW toolchain.

Also, is there any reason to blow away the lib directory on a clean?
I''ve always
had problems with that due to MSVC putting more than just the .so file in
there. I also suggest changing delete_files_in to:

def delete_files_in(dir)
    Dir[File.join(dir, "*")].each do |f|
        if !(f =~ /CVS/)
        	force_delete(f)
        end
    end
end

this might make life a little easier.

Thats all for now,

Nick


Quoting Kevin Smith <wxruby@qualitycode.com>:
> Nick wrote:
> > It now successfully builds (or should successfully build), but it
isn''t
> > running. We''re tracking what the problem is, but we could use
some help.
>
> For those of us without MS-Windows boxes, can you describe the symptoms
> of the bug(s) you''re seeing with wxruby-swig?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin
> _______________________________________________
> wxruby-users mailing list
> wxruby-users@rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wxruby-users
>

devel@nicreations.com wrote:
>
> Alright, I found out what was going on. I forgot to turn on RTTI
> in MSVC so SWIG
> could work properly. There was also a mixup in App.i that wasn''t
> kicking off
> the main loop. So now MSVC has a wxruby-swig window!
>
> I am still crashing on program exit (GC issue). I can''t get a
> MinGW version to
> build, but it''s because Rake won''t work with MSYS. I need
to send an email
> their way to see if it''s ever been tested with the MinGW
toolchain.
This is great, Nick! I''m really glad to see you are making some
headway.

Keep up the good work!

Curt

devel@nicreations.com wrote:
> Also, is there any reason to blow away the lib directory on a clean?
I''ve always
> had problems with that due to MSVC putting more than just the .so file in
> there. I also suggest changing delete_files_in to:
No, there''s no compelling reason to delete the lib directory, and doing
so is causing pain. Your proposed rakefile change looks fine.

Thanks,

Kevini