I've taken my first shot at compiling GIMP from scratch. In this case, I wanted to create a Cygwin-based version. There were a few bumps in the road:

1. configure doesn't figure out the symbol prefix $(SYMPREFIX)properly. It should be an underscore, but configure set it to an empty string. Manually changing it in config.status and re-running it worked around the problem.

2. In app/base/base-utils.c, there's a header (execinfo.h) used for backtrace that's not available. I saw some other mention of it somewhere that suggested it's not available and, perhaps temporarily, changed it to simply strdup a "Not available" message in return. I hope to dig into that further later on.

3. The libffi that Cygwin installs (/usr/bin/cygffi-4.dll) has an import library and libtool library file, but they are buried deep in /usr/lib/gcc/... and there's nothing in pkgconfig, so the configuration code and libtool couldn't find them. I compiled new sources and installed and that produced a newer version with the requisite information (but the -4 is needed by something in glib and has to be left alone).

4. I can't get anywhere with devel-docs, and reconfigured to leave them out. I didn't take a lot of time, though; I'd like to later.

But now the weird stuff.

Upon launching Gimp, there are some complaints about missing files from the GEGL DLLs, which I need to check into. I don't think they pertain to what follows.

I know close to nothing about Python, so this is totally newbie stuff in that area.

At first gimpfu, gimpui and others couldn't be imported. I set PYTHONPATH, and later PYTHONINSPECT, but strangely, although I could run python interactively and list modules and they would show up, they didn't when Gimp was loading. I eventually added symlinks in /usr/lib/python2.6 to everything in Gimp's python directory and that took care of everything except this:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/gimp/2.0/plug-ins/text-brush.py", line 20, in

from gimpfu import * File "/usr/lib/python2.6/gimpfu.py", line 76, in import gimp
ImportError: No module named gimp

with similar messages for all of the other modules.

There is an object library gimp.a and libtool gimp.la, but nothing else named just gimp.* in /usr/local/lib/gimp/2.0/python. The .la file has an empty dlname, so I am not sure what is supposed to happen here. In any case, python isn't finding the gimp module.

It would be understandable if that is responsible for the problems that follow, but some seem unrelated, so I'll mention them anyway.

It doesn't give up; after that; then this comes up:

(gimp-2.7:6384): LibGimpBase-WARNING **: gimp-2.7: gimp_wire_read(): error Error: ( : 5986618) define: unable to alter immutable GREEN-HUES Error: ( : 5986884) define: unable to alter immutable GRID-DOUBLE-DASH
Error: ( : 6034280) define: unable to alter immutable PDB-END Error: ( : 6035008) define: unable to alter immutable GRADIENT-CONICAL-ASYMMETRIC

and a long list of similar errors follows.

Finally, this happens:

... Error: ( : 448) define: unable to alter immutable CUSTOM-PALETTE Error: ( : 119) not enough arguments script-fu.exe-Warning: Error while loading /usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/basic2-logo.scm:

Error: (/usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/basic2-logo.scm : 92) script-fu-register: argument types must be integer values

script-fu.exe-Warning: Error while loading /usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/beveled-button.scm:

Error: (/usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/beveled-button.scm : 158) script-fu-register: argument types must be integer values

script-fu.exe-Warning: Error while loading /usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/beveled-pattern-button.scm:

Error: (/usr/local/share/gimp/2.0/scripts/beveled-pattern-button.scm : 133) script-fu-register: argument types must be integer values

with similar complaints about what appears to be the entire set of plugins.

It then brings up Gimp's window, but there are no filters listed and most of the features under Colors are missing. I can load an image and do some of the usual actions on it.

(I see a means of grouping layers has been added. This looks like it will be a godsend. Thanks!)

It's getting rather late and I've been at this for some time, so I'm going to leave it alone for a while, but perhaps someone can give me a jump-start on where to look to take care of these thinks.

Thanks for any help, Ray Simard
rhs.gimp@sylvan-glade.com