New simplified installation procedure on Windows

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Hi,
I just want to thank you for simplifying the installation steps! My PC is windows 10, x64 ,and I could easily install Graphviz with your help!

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First of all, thank you for your work!
Years ago (I think it was in 2014), in an old PC with Windows XP, I easily used GraphViz to create a graph that I still own. Today I would need to create a similar graph, so I followed your guide to install GraphViz 2.50.0 on Windows 10 64bit. During the installation I also checked the ā€œInstall a desktop iconā€ checkbox. I finished the installation without errorsā€¦ but now?! No icon appeared either on my desktop or in the installation folder on the C:\ drive.

I noticed in this thread on your forum that Iā€™m not the only Windows user to be blown away by the installation result. I think you could improve the guide by adding an ā€œafter installationā€ paragraph. And in fact, as the user @Marc_Compere also asked, I still donā€™t understand: isnā€™t there a graphical application that I can launch to manage GraphViz projects? I have an old screenshot (as I mentioned, maybe 2014, GraphViz version 2.38 installed on Windows XP) in which I managed the graph code from a GraphViz form, and I seem to remember that from there I generated a .png image because I have collected some of these files in that project folder.

I have now followed the conversion of my old file from .gv to .svg as the user @steveroush advised but, again, the question remains: what now?! I can open and edit the .svg file with a text editor, ok, but I have no way to interact graphically with the GraphViz tools? And save the .png of any new graph?

Thanks for any replies!

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Most of the Graphviz tools are command line tools, i.e., they do not have a GUI. The screenshot you have is from the GVEdit tool. Itā€™s currently not built for Windows. We have a pull request enabling it, but we havenā€™t merged it since we donā€™t know how to deal with the licensing issues. See Re-add gvedit to Windows MSBuild (!1569) Ā· Merge requests Ā· graphviz / graphviz Ā· GitLab. If youā€™re handy you might be able to check it out and build it yourself.

Hereā€™s a screenshot from my own build:

image
image1513Ɨ1345 110 KB

You might also be able to install or build a Linux version if you prefer that.

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Thanks for your reply, magjac. The GVEdit tool, thatā€™s right, thatā€™s exactly what I was referring to!
Ouch, licensing issues, thatā€™s really a shame. :frowning:

Of course, I have already solved it by overwriting the bin folder of the current 2.50.0 version with the one I exhumed from my old PC, on which I had a 2.38 version. Then I simply registered the dlls (among which there are two of Qt, actually) from CMD.

Quickly, from CMD, before overwriting the \bin\ folder:
FOR %%X IN (\Program Files\Graphviz\bin\*.DLL) DO CALL regsvr32 -s -u %%X
to unregister the dlls of the current installed version. Then, after overwriting, again from CMD:
FOR %%X IN (\Program Files\Graphviz\bin\*.DLL) DO CALL regsvr32 -s %%X
At this point, just open the gvedit.exe file in the \bin\ folder.

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