Provide Windows Wheels

[lazka]

ebassi suggested it and has some example code here: https://github.com/anholt/libepoxy/blob/master/.appveyor.yml

[stuaxo]

I was thinking along the same lines - only didn't open a ticket as I'm not going to have any free time starting in about 2 weeks.

This is definitely a way forward if we want .WHL builds, using VS (which we do, since Python built with MingW is not compatible with the default VS built python when it comes to binary modules like PyCairo).

[lazka]

Thanks. Any help appreciated.

If mingw builds are easier, they still can help prevent general Windows build/test breakage for starters.

For MSVC builds and wheels etc I'm wondering who would be installing them? Would a cairo build be required and where would you get one? Should cairo be bundled in the wheel somehow?

[stuaxo]

Starting with mingw builds definitely makes sense, if it's too much hassle now then adding MSVC to appveyor later is a definite possibility.

I think the wheel contains the _cairo.pyd, which is pycairo + cairo (have a look at the mingw build on http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ and older non WHL builds for MSVC.)

I looked at _cairo.pyd in a resource viewer a while ago and it looked like it had all the cairo symbols, also the 1.3MB size seemed right for pycairo including cairo.

Potential users are anyone on the default build of python on windows with an interest in pycairo, there are bits of code on the net for combining it with pygame, pyglet and other gaming engines for a start.

[lazka]

OK, sounds good!

[lazka]

I've added some mingw test jobs

[lazka]

Some things I've found:

• https://github.com/preshing/cairo-windows
• http://preshing.com/20170529/heres-a-standalone-cairo-dll-for-windows/ (see the comments)
• https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg (which includes cairo)

[lazka]

Short status update:

• We use the DLL from https://github.com/preshing/cairo-windows to test the msvc build on appveyor
• Some tests are skipped with it (search for "msvc fixme"), maybe due to the cairo dll including the runtime, but it should link against the runtime used by Python. Also the DLL doesn't enable all features (tee surface for example)

Todo:

• Build our own cairo dlls on appveyor (maybe using the script from https://github.com/preshing/cairo-windows)
• Try to make the currently skipped tests pass and make sure the test coverage is good
• Builds wheels