What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

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What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby alex_farlie » Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:07 pm

I am asking because I noted that the 1.20 no longer supports Windows 32bit, despite the alpha I was using back in 2017 doing so.

I looked into the dependencies mentioned and didn't see an obvious statement as to which one was no longer supported.

Did QT drop 32bit support, or was another dependency involved? (Python itself appears to still have a 32 bit build.)

Anything pre Windows 10 is now technically EOL anyway ( which is likely to be the last 32 bit Windows OS anyone is seriously using.)

BTW thanks for updating the license to clarify things, (given the previous discussion) of this.
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Re: What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby joepal » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:37 pm

It was hard to debug what blocked win32. As I remember it, it was a deep dependency for PyQt. That is, pyqt itself was possible to get compiled for 32 bit, but some other library it depended on had parts which were 64-bit only. This caused crashes that would require a debugger to hunt down, and there was no way we would be able to maintain specific versions of these libs on our own.

However, it is possible that the situation is different now. If that is the case, it should be possible to run MH from source on a 32-bit windows. This is not a particularly complicated process, so maybe it's worth trying? The basic instructions are in the readme here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman
Joel Palmius (LinkedIn)
MakeHuman Infrastructure Manager
http://www.palmius.com/joel
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Re: What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby alex_farlie » Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:49 pm

joepal wrote:It was hard to debug what blocked win32. As I remember it, it was a deep dependency for PyQt. That is, pyqt itself was possible to get compiled for 32 bit, but some other library it depended on had parts which were 64-bit only. This caused crashes that would require a debugger to hunt down, and there was no way we would be able to maintain specific versions of these libs on our own.

However, it is possible that the situation is different now. If that is the case, it should be possible to run MH from source on a 32-bit windows. This is not a particularly complicated process, so maybe it's worth trying? The basic instructions are in the readme here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman


I will bear that in mind.. I will also see if there something in QT that was 64 bit only now.
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Re: What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby alex_farlie » Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:39 pm

Okay making progress..

I'm still on Windows 7 so have to use Python 3.8.9 not the latest version... I have my suspicions that I may also have to use a specific PyQt version as well, and that something may have changed between python versions.

Is there anything in MH 1.20 that needs Python 3.9 specfics?

I am however thinking at this point I am wondering if it's not worth the hassle on something that's officially EOL.... :roll:
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Re: What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby Aranuvir » Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:02 pm

My default Python3 (from the operating system) is 3.8.5. And I think we tested MakeHuman against that version. IMHO pip should give you the correct version of Qt for your platform & Python version. Just install numpy and PyOpenGL and you should be good to go. And if you intend to do some coding/debugging, I can recommend to install jupyter (notebook or lab) and qtconsole, too. It'll give you a much better shell inside MakeHuman...
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Re: What was the dependency that killed Win32 builds?

Postby alex_farlie » Tue May 03, 2022 10:05 am

alex_farlie wrote:Okay making progress..

I'm still on Windows 7 so have to use Python 3.8.9 not the latest version... I have my suspicions that I may also have to use a specific PyQt version as well, and that something may have changed between python versions.

Is there anything in MH 1.20 that needs Python 3.9 specfics?


I had some spare time so I followed the instructions for running it from source and I have the current 'master' build running in Windows 7 with some minor issues ( I am seeing some libpng warnings in the console)., but it generally appears to work.

This suggests that the issue with Win32 builds, is as explained previously down to a specific library or dependency.

The install process is straightforward although you have to run as adminstrator , and disable any automated firweall 'containment' (I've had the latter catch me out previoulsy).
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