[mapserver-users] What is the best way to test development versions on Windows?

[Rahkonen Jukka (Tike)]

Hi,

I would like to test the new dynamic heatmaps http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-108.html but I am on Windows and Mapserver project is not extremely Windows friendly nowadays. Ideal for users like me would be to have for example weekly builds which could be installed like MS4W - unzip and run. But we don't have such builds and MS4W lags so much behind that curious users need to use something else.

What I have done sometimes is to make a basic install with MS4W and then download fresh development binaries from gisinternals. By copying mapserv.exe and GDAL dll files into ms4w\apache\cgi-bin it is usually possible to make the new Mapserver dev version to run. However, the result is often unstable and some strange things happen.  Probably I have then something incompatible in GDAL directories of MS4W and I should copy some more files. Is it even theoretically possible to update MS4W reliably in this way?
 
Another alternative is obviously to use OSGeo4W installer. However, I feel it is a somewhat odd creature which installs this and that even I would only like to test Mapserver. I seem to have about 1 GB on disk while MS4W is perhaps 200 MB.  It is also impossible to know what all OSGeo4W installer is updating when is installs a new nightly build of Mapserver so I think it is necessary to make a backup copy of the whole OSGeo4W directory if there happens to be a need to go back to yesterday's version.

What other Windows users and developers consider as a best way to stay close to the cutting edge? Other than to start using Linux, I mean.

-Jukka Rahkonen-