My good friend BeccaPet alerted me to an intriguing blog post by Forestaurora who documents her brave and ultimately successful fight to get Phoenix to build on Windows.
Yes, that's right, Microsoft Windows. By far the most popular platform for SL users.
I mean, you would expect that the Phoenix dev team would have ironed out all of the little niggles years ago for the Windows platform! But it seems poor Forestaurora even had to alter the C++ code to make it build.
The list of prerequisite steps looks frighteningly too long to me as well. I'm no Visual Studio expert, but in RL I have worked on a large VS based project where the build steps on a fresh developer's box would be similar to the "I have a dream" test:
1. Unpack prebuilt dependency libraries and headers in a certain place
2. Open the VS .sln file that's checked in to the source control system
3. Press the "Run" button. This causes the compile and link, and runs the program successfully.
Maybe this should be the Windows equivalent of the "I have a dream" test? Certainly the steps that Forestaurora went through can be simplified so that future developers don't get put off. I already know of one Windows developer who has been scared off - who knows what contributions they could have made to the viewer? Hopefully we can make a better viewer build experience for people!
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