[rkward-devel] static windows binary

[Prasenjit Kapat]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 5:32 PM, meik michalke
<meik.michalke at uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>
> now that i've toyed around with the windows version a little (nice to see that
> rkward can be run from a network share and even a DVD without installation), i
> was wondering if a static build was possible.

This is a really interesting idea and I believe it will be really
helpful in making a non linux person try rkward.

> well, i'm not using windows anyways, but it's hard to convice someone to give
> rkward a try if that means to install so much otherwise unneeded stuff. apart
> from that, of KDE could be stripped down to the really needed parts, rkward
> could easily be burnt as a live CD for windows users.
>
> how do you feel about this?

I had installed a 0.5.3-preX version on a Win 7 tablet a few days
back. And IIRC:
* KDE installed fine, did not need any admin rights (UAC or whatever
they call it)
* but RKward needed an admin password to install!

I am just "thinking out loud" now: For windows split rkward into three parts:

1. Core rkward which will have a special config file. The config file
will provide the path to KDE, R folders. I think this is already in
place.
2. Provide a zipped archive of essential KDE libraries and stick with
this till the next releasable version of rkward. These KDE libs should
be from the most stable version of KDE on windows (need not be
latest).
3. Provide the latest R binary (preferably in a zipped form, not as an
installer).

(Of course, 2, 3 above should be optional; in the sense that, if the
user already has an existing KDE and/or R installation then allow
him/her to use those instead.)

So that the following steps could yield a usable Rkward on windows:

1. Create three folders C:\Rkward\rkward, C:\Rkward\KDE, C:\Rkward\R
(just example)
2. Unzip the bundled KDE libs into C:\Rkward\KDE
3. Unzip the bundled R into C:\Rkward\R
4. Unzip rkward into C:\Rkward\rkward,
5. Open the "special config" file and specify/modify the KDE and R paths
6. Create a shortcut to C:\Rkward\rkward\rkward.bat (or whatever is
the correct executable binary is windows) on the desktop

Now again, these are just wild thoughts...
-- 
Prasenjit