0

Ther are many articles about how to install spread library on Linux(1. download source & unzip it 2.run ./config 3. make 4. make install) but seems no article about how to install spread on Windows......

I had downloaded spread-bin-4.4.0-Windows8_x64 from official site(my environemnt is win10), but there is no .bat or .exe file found under the unzipped folder. Does anyone know how to install spread library on Windows?

maple
  • 15
  • 5

2 Answers2

0

In linux, there is a standard way of installing libraries that all the software on your machine is supposed to use. In part this works because all that software is chosen in such a way that the same versions of libraries will satisfy everyone, that's what makes up a linux distribution to some extent.

In windows, the model of development is totally different. Any third party software, not from microsoft, is something the customer paid for and microsoft never signs off on it or anything. Third party stuff generally is supposed to provide its own libraries since you have no idea what other third party stuff is present. There's not much point in globally installing things since most programs won't use what you globally install anyways.

So, if you have a library on windows, you should install in whatever way the program that you intend to use it with will find it. If you are intending to install it for use with a project you are developing, that is a different question, and ultimately one about your build system or IDE.

In modern days there are things like NuGet which allow you to do things in a more linuxy way on windows. But that's quite recent and not that much software from typical user's perspective gets its dependencies that way.

Chris Beck
  • 15,614
  • 4
  • 51
  • 87
  • Thanks a lot for your sharing! I think it also explains why the boost library needed to build on Windows to generate appropriate libraries for the specific OS version. But like boost, it's expected to have instructions & parameters description that can be uesed to build spread on Windows... Could you kindly sharing experienece on installing(building) spread on Windows? Or I can only use the spread-bin-4.4.0-Windows8_x64 package that directly reference to spread-bin-4.4.0-Windows8_x64\bin & spread-bin-4.4.0-Windows8_x64\lib in my IDE(ex: Visual Studio or Eclipse with CDT)? – maple Jun 06 '16 at 08:10
0

After further study, I found a Visual Studio solution file:spread.sln under \win32 folder! So in conclusion, to install Spread libarary on Windows:

1. get source codes from http://www.spread.org/download.html
2. unzip
3. open solution file under \win32 folder with Visual Studio
(Please note that "do not" use relatively new version of VS since this solution is built with older VS(like VS 2010) otherwise unexpected errors occurred)
4. build solution

There you go! You can build your project with Spread library now! P.S. This spread.sln is a Win32 solution. I'm just wonder is there a Win64 version solution file......

maple
  • 15
  • 5