I was interested in this project, I read this thread and admire the people who support this non-commercial coin.
I would also like to make my own contribution.
On behalf of the members of this group, welcome.
I have a question - I downloaded a wallet for Windows, version 0.9.2.0-unk-beta
I read the thread found a description branch v0.9.4-gap
I loved this advanced wallet. but there is no compiled version.
Why is that?
Not everyone has the ability to independently compile for Windows.
Since the advent of VMs and Windows Subsystem for Linux, they certainly do but most Windows users seem to have become habituated to the convenience of leaving it to someone else to provide cross-compiled binaries.
The existing Windows binaries were (probably) cross-compiled from (what is now) the legacy codebase (0.9.2 -
https://github.com/gapcoin/gapcoin/releases) back in 2015 when the code was contemporary with OSes of the time. Unfortunately, despite considerable effort, I haven't been able to successfully cross-compile a Windows binary from the "updated" 0.9.4 version - note that the term is slightly misleading, it's hardly updated, just adjusted to cater for backwards-incompatible changes in the newer boost libraries that are compatible with contemporary Linux versions - just in order to get it to compile. The 0.9.4 additions are merely cosmetic, the underlying engine remains unchanged. Back in 2015, the "build-msw" documentation (
https://github.com/gapcoin/gapcoin/blob/v0.9.2-gap/doc/build-msw.md) only dealt with building the headless daemon (i.e. the non-GUI version) and so altcoin devs were left to their own devices as regards Windows GUI binaries.
I tried back-porting the "depends" cross-compilation solution that was introduced in a later version of Bitcoin (0.10, I think it was) but the solution is tailored to specific versions of the support packages and in particular the specific Qt packages referenced are simply no longer available so I was obliged to work with
contemporary versions of the packages as available in Bitcoin Core 0.18.
The above-refefenced work has been done in a separate branch (
https://github.com/gapcoin-project/gapcoin/tree/v0.9.4-gap-mingw/depends) It
sort of works - the headless daemon builds but I haven't been able to successfully use it to cross-compile the Windows GUI version. In principle, the depends solution is relatively easy to use, in the depends directory, type
make HOST=x86_64-w64-mingw32 -j4 to create the cross-compiled packages and then, in the top-level folder
./configure --prefix=`pwd`/depends/x86_64-w64-mingw32 will cross-compile the coin and link against the cross-compiled packages. Qt is persistently cranky, though.
As an alternative approach, Windows users could d/l the QtCreator package and try use that as a platform for compiling natively on Windows (after first compiling the boost, gmp, mpfr, ssl, miniupnpc, qrencode, zlib, zmq, etc dependencies) but aiui, it's something of a nightmarish process.
As regards regards the platform preferences of the group, I'll leave you to draw your own inferences from the fact that the chainz explorer reports:
Client Version | number | percent | total |
Satoshi:0.9.2 | 16 | 84.2 % | 84.2 % |
Satinki:0.16.3 | 1 | 5.3 % | 89.5 % |
Satoshi Gapcoin Clan:0.9.3 | 1 | 5.3 % | 94.7 % |
Satoshi:0.9.4 | 1 | 5.3 % | 100.0 % |
(The 0.16.3 version is mine and is undergoing trials).
Cheers
Graham