help | Building a repo to provide to others for help

IMPORTANT: You MUST follow steps 1 - 3 above before running the code below. After running npm run rebuild you should see an error similar to the following Canvas.obj : error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol ... ArrayBuffer::GetBackingStore(void) ... Rebuild Failed (also see screenshot). If you see a different error about GTK / Cairo OR about error C2429: language feature 'terse static assert' requires compiler flag '/std:c++17' then you likely did not follow the steps above correctly.).
Make sure most recent version of Node.js is installed and you follow the install prompts to install additional tools which will include visual studio build tools and python etc. Link to download: https://nodejs.org/en/download/ Recommend downloading the LTS version For me currently the downloaded installer version is: node-v18.12.1-x64.msi During install make sure you select Automatically install the necessary tools...: After install of Node.js is complete, a PowerShell window will open and ask you to Press and key to continue... in order to install the necessary VS Tools to compile native modules. You MUST complete this. You should see PowerShell start the install and show something like the following: It should take a couple minutes to finish at which point you will see a message confirming success and telling you to Type ENTER to exit:. You are now ready to continue with the next step.
Because of some old dependencies, even when you install the latest version of Visual Studio Build Tools via Nodejs (Step 1 above) you still need to manually install the legacy 2017 MSVC build tools by doing the following: Download Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 installer (or whatever the current version shows today) from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#build-tools-for-visual-studio-2022 Launch the downloaded VS Build Tools installer vs_BuildTools.exe Select Desktop development with C++ checkbox On the right, expand Desktop development with C++, in the Optional section leave everything that is already checked as is and then make sure MSVC v141 - VS 2017 C++... (towards the bottom) is checked Now click Install and wait for the install to complete.
You should now Reboot your computer to ensure all the new tools are available.
Download the GTK 2 bundle (MUST be GTK2 and NOT GTK3) for Win32 or Win64. Unzip the contents to C:\GTK. (see here for more info) NOTE: I have included the win64 version of GTK2 in this repo in the resources folder: gtk+-bundle_2.22.1-20101229_win64.zip After download and extraction, it should look like this:
Clone this repository using: https://github.com/GitMurf/help.git
Now follow the code block below (PowerShell) to install the project and run it for the first time (which will give you the error as described here: https://github.com/GitMurf/help/issues/1 which leads to my post here about the goals to fix: https://github.com/GitMurf/help/issues/2)