Hello all,
I intend to put this in a Wiki:
The Python2 D-Rats is pretty much frozen, no more updates, and it does not have bug fixes that are in the Python3 version.
If you want to run Python3 D-Rats on Microsoft Windows, these are going to be the options:
* Use a WSL and one of the Unix subsystems. Currently I am not setup to test in this environment. If you go this route, I think Ubuntu 22.04 would be the best option, followed by Ubuntu 22.04.
Only Windows 10/11 64 bit have this option.
* Use the MSYS2 environment to install Python3 and packages, and optionally a python virtualenv.
This will be the only option for Windows 7, and if you want to run on Windows 7, you will need to download and setup MSYS2 *NOW* as they are dropping support for Windows 7 this year and may have already dropped it. Once they drop support for Windows 7, I do not know if they will keep the last version to support Windows 7 online for download.
* Use a commercial Python. Even though some are free for personal use, I will not be installing or testing on a Commercial Python. If someone wants to do that support, feel free to contribute instructions on how to use.
* Currently building a single Windows package for Simple installing is not practical. On Windows 7, I can not get the GTK 3 stuff to just build and install with the Python.org Python distribution. All articles I have found online about it so far do hot have a fix, but recommend using msys2 instead, and that is where the treads stop. I have determined that it would take too much of my time, to figure this out, and there are more fixes/updates I would like to get into D-Rats soon. If someone else can figure this out with out using a commercial Linux, feel free to contribute.
* Use a Linux based system.
Future distributions are going to require installing two packages.
For winlink support, an optional lzhuf package, currently available in the files section for group members pre-packaged for Windows 7 and later and some Ubuntu and Debian distributions. For other platforms, you will need to download the source and build it, until someone contributes a pre-built package or tarball for that platform.
The D-Rats will be packaged in the future in a generic PIP installable tarball at first. This is planned to be followed up with Ubuntu and Debian packages. It will no longer contain the lzhuf binary as it makes it too complex to package it in a way supported by Python.
Generally if you have the Python3 and GTK-3 environment setup it will install with Pip. The Ubuntu/Debian packages will not need PIP to install.
73,
-John
