ROOT on Windows Vista

chamont · November 7, 2008, 11:01am

Hi Rooters,

A collegue try to install/use ROOT on Windows Vista.
She tried with “WindowsXP/NT/w2000 with VC++ 7.1, version 5.21/04 (good old tar file)”, and apparently face a “libWin32gdk.dll” problem.
I guess this library is not any more valid on Vista.

Is ROOT tested on Vista ?
Or did somebody attempt to compile on Vista ?

David.

bellenot · November 7, 2008, 12:16pm

Hi David,

I build and use ROOT on Vista every day!
What is the exact problem?

Cheers,
Bertrand.

chamont · November 7, 2008, 12:41pm

She installed the tar file “WindowsXP/NT/w2000 with VC++ 7.1, version 5.21/04”, and when she run ROOT, it complains about lacking “libWin32gdk.dll” . This library is expected to exist for vista ?
I assumed the problem is that the prebuilt windows ROOT are not compatible with Vista.

I posted here because I did not found the word “vista” on the ROOT site, and I was wondering if it was not supported at all. If you build and use ROOT daily on vista, that’s good news and I will suggest her to install some VC++ and compile ROOT from the sources.

Are there tricks to know about or is it rather straightforward ?
At first look, root.cern.ch/root/Install.html seems purely unix-oriented.

Or perhaps you have some prebuilt tar file which you can share ?

bellenot · November 7, 2008, 1:16pm

Hi,

No need to rebuild root… libWin32gdk.dll must be in the root\bin directory.
To be able to use root, a couple of environment variables have to be correctly set. To do so, two options:

run root\bin\thisroot.bat before to use root
set ROOTSYS environment variable pointing to root directory and add %ROOTSYS%\bin in your path

[edit]
And yes, I have prebuilt tar files that I can share, they are all in ftp://root.cern.ch/root/

Bertrand.

chamont · November 7, 2008, 1:35pm

Ok. I wrongly thought libWin32gdk.dll was a windows system library.
So, she simply was not setting correctly her environement…
I apologize for the noise.

bellenot · November 7, 2008, 1:36pm

No problem, don’t worry, no need to apologize!
Cheers, Bertrand.

chamont · November 7, 2008, 1:40pm

Perhaps would be useful to add “Vista” in the list of windows flavors which are mentionned in the names of tar files such as :
“WindowsXP/NT/w2000 with VC++ 7.1, version 5.21/04 (good old tar file)”.
This would avoid windows newbies like me to wonder if vista deserves a special procedure.

bellenot · November 7, 2008, 1:47pm

You’re right, we’ll change this. Sorry for the trouble…
Bertrand.