All In One Gramps Software Bundle for Windows
Gramps 3.4 and earlier. Any files listed here may be not suitable for normal every day use! (My lawyer advised me to say that, but many people are using this and have reported no problems at all.) |
The Gramps "software bundle" for Windows or GrampsAIO is an all-in-one (a.k.a. "AIO") installation package of Gramps which includes all dependencies for the Windows platform. (See also Gramps and Windows.)
Not only are all dependencies included ("bundled"), so that users do not have to first manually install each one of them, but they are installed in such a fashion that Gramps can easily find them.
For the technically sophisticated, GrampsAIO is rebuild-able: it contains an install script which can make a new installable program from the installed one.
For example somebody might like to repackage Gramps with their code changes, or favorite addons, or even their own family trees, etc.
Contents
Technical details
The Windows logic for this bundle is that the first entry in the search path is the current working directory... the one in which the program is started. So, if any Gramps dependency is in that same working directory, there is no need to look further for that dependency in a system folder. This eliminates the possibility of loading an incompatible one -- thus "dependency hell" is avoided. This is also the reason why GrampsAIO must be started from its own folder. Also, in newer Windows versions there may be security restriction with shell scripts so GrampsAIO does not use one.)
Installation folder
This distribution is directory based, which means it loads all dependencies from the directory in which they have been installed.
That folder's location depends on whether the person doing the installation has administrative rights on the Windows machine. If an administrator installs it, the directory may be chosen. In that case, the default suggestion being %ProgramFiles%\GrampsAIO
(for example C:\Program Files\GrampsAIO
). If a non-administrator installs it, it will be placed in the user's personal workspace, in %APPDATA%\GrampsAIO
(for example C:\Documents and Settings\Jones\Application Data\GrampsAIO
).
As an example, a user with administrator rights using GrampsAOI-5.2.3_win64.exe installer and accepting the standard destination folder during installation, C:\Program Files\GrampsAOI64-5.2.3
would be the location for the Gramps executable. While not common, installing the 32-bit version of Gramps on a 64-bit OS, the path would be C:\Program Files (x86)\GrampsAIO32-5.1.5
. Finally, if you chose to install Gramps in a non-standard directory, use that folder path instead instead.
To use it from the console (cmd.exe prompt), you must first go to the directory where the dependencies were installed (GrampsAIO\bin
); for example:
cd C:\GrampsAIO\bin; python -EO ..\share\gramps\gramps.py
(but the installation may have been put somewhere else and so you should probably first search for the GrampsAIO\bin folder to make sure).
Why GrampsAIO was made
- easy installation:
- no searching web for appropriate packages
- one click install
- no dependency hell:
- all libraries work together
- on upgrade of a library all other libraries are rebuilt with that version
How GrampsAIO was made
- Place all software Gramps needs in one package:
- all core non-python libraries and applications
- any optional non-python libraries and applications
- python bindings for core libraries
- python bindings for optional libraries
- use NSIS (Nullsoft Script-able Install System)
Software releases:
The preferred way to get the GrampsAIO bundle is to download it from the official Gramps software repository. See Download for the current version and link to it.
You can follow progress of GrampAIO-4 bundle development at their page Older versions or developmental versions are available directly from the GrampsAIO bundle's author. See below.
See also
- Native PO File support for NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System)
- GrampsAIO-3
- GrampsAIO-4
- GrampsAIO-4 package updating