> But it makes the default ok, to get a first time build up and running
> without too much confusion.
As someone who just went through the pain of a first time build on
Windows, perhaps I can offer my experience.
1) When I downloaded the source (with Mozilla), the name it gave on my
computer was "ethereal-0.10.0a.tar.gz.tar". I didn't have a utility to
unpack that, so I went down the hall to another programmer who managed
to unpack it with a tool he had. He had to rename it to
"ethereal-0.10.0a.tar.gz" for his tool to work.
Windows users expect .zip files, but if that is too much of a
maintenance problem, it would be nice if there were a link on your site
to a tar tool and explicit instructions how to use it.
2) There are a number of dependant libraries that go into
c:\ethereal-win32-libs. Would it be possible to put them all into a
single .zip file that unzipped to c:\ethereal-win32-libs? It took me a
while to get all the libraries and get them in the right path.
3) Could you zip up the necessary extra tools needed for MSVC users
(that is, sed, flex, bison, python, perl) so that I don't have to chase
them down?
4) After building ethereal.exe, I double-clicked it from explorer and it
complained about not finding some DLLs. Could the build process put the
necessary DLLs in the same directory as ethereal?
5) MSVC users tend to like DSW and DSP files instead of make files. They
make it convenient to use the IDE.
Then, the process for first timers using MSVC is:
1) Download the latest source. Unzip it to the default location.
2) Download the dependant libs. Unzip it to the default location.
3) Download the necessary tools. Unzip it to the default location.
4) Start MSVC, load Ethereal.dsw.
5) Build.
6) Run.
That would have saved me a couple of days of fiddling with it.
Thanks,