New simplified installation procedure on Windows

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!

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:

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

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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