Gaphor on Windows

Gaphor can be installed as with our installer. Check out the Gaphor download page for details.

Older releases are available from GitHub.

CI builds are also available.

Development Environment

Choco

We recommend using Chocolately as a package manager in Windows.

To install it, open PowerShell as an administrator, then execute:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

To run local scripts in follow-on steps, also execute

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

This allows for local PowerShell scripts to run without signing, but still requires signing for remote scripts.

Git

To set up a development environment in Windows first install Git by executing as an administrator:

choco install git

GTK and Python with Gvsbuild

Gvsbuild provides pre-built GTK libraries for Windows. We will install these libraries and Python.

Install the Latest Python

In Windows, The full installer contains all the Python components and is the best option for developers using Python for any kind of project.

For more information on how to use the official installer, please see the full installer instructions. The default installation options should be fine for use with Gaphor.

  1. Install the latest Python version using the official installer.

  2. Open a PowerShell terminal as a normal user and check the python version:

    py -3.12 --version

Install Graphviz

Graphviz is used by Gaphor for automatic diagram formatting.

  1. Install from Chocolately with administrator PowerShell:

    choco install graphviz

  2. Restart your PowerShell terminal as a normal user and check that the dot command is available:

    dot -?

Install pipx

From the regular user PowerShell terminal execute:

py -3.12 -m pip install --user pipx
py -3.12 -m pipx ensurepath

Download GTK

Download the latest release asset at https://github.com/wingtk/gvsbuild/releases. The file will be called GTK4_Gvsbuild_VERSION_x64.zip, where VERSION is the latest released version.

Unzip the GTK4_Gvsbuild_VERSION_x64.zip file to C:\gtk. For example with 7Zip:

7z x GTK4_Gvsbuild_*.zip  -oC:\gtk -y

Setup Gaphor

In the same PowerShell terminal, clone the repository:

cd (to the location you want to put Gaphor)
git clone https://github.com/gaphor/gaphor.git
cd gaphor

Install Poetry

pipx install poetry

Add GTK to your environmental variables:

$env:Path = $env:Path + ";C:\gtk\bin"
$env:LIB = "C:\gtk\lib"
$env:INCLUDE = "C:\gtk\include;C:\gtk\include\cairo;C:\gtk\include\glib-2.0;C:\gtk\include\gobject-introspection-1.0;C:\gtk\lib\glib-2.0\include;"
$env:XDG_DATA_HOME = "$HOME\.local\share"

You can also edit your account’s Environmental Variables to persist across PowerShell sessions.

Install Gaphor’s dependencies

poetry install

Install the git hook scripts

poetry run pre-commit install

Reinstall PyGObject and pycairo using gvsbuild wheels

poetry run pip install --force-reinstall (Resolve-Path C:\gtk\wheels\PyGObject*.whl)
poetry run pip install --force-reinstall (Resolve-Path C:\gtk\wheels\pycairo*.whl)

Launch Gaphor!

poetry run gaphor

Debugging using Visual Studio Code

Start a new PowerShell terminal, and set current directory to the project folder:

cd (to the location you put gaphor)

Ensure that path environment variable is set:

$env:Path = "C:\gtk\bin;" + $env:Path

Start Visual Studio Code:

code .

To start the debugger, execute the following steps:

  1. Open __main__.py file from gaphor folder

  2. Add a breakpoint on line main(sys.argv)

  3. In the menu, select Run → Start debugging

  4. Choose Select module from the list

  5. Enter gaphor as module name

Visual Studio Code will start the application in debug mode, and will stop at main.

Packaging for Windows

In order to create an exe installation package for Windows, we utilize PyInstaller which analyzes Gaphor to find all the dependencies and bundle them in to a single folder. We then use a custom bash script that creates a Windows installer using NSIS and a portable installer using 7-Zip. To install them, open PowerShell as an administrator, then execute:

choco install nsis 7zip

Then build your installer using:

poetry install --only main,packaging,automation
poetry build
poetry run poe package
poetry run poe win-installer