Re: LilyPond-2.22.2 does not work on Windows XP

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I have a Windows XP computer with Lilypond 2.10.25.  It works fine
> with simple program codes and advanced code developed with earlier
> versions of Lilypond.  It does not work so well when I try to use a
> newer program developed with a later version of Lilypond, as I get
> many error messages.

I guess this is mainly due to syntax changes in more recent LilyPond
versions.  Normally, you would run `convert-ly` (which is a Python
script) to update your the source code.

> I therefore tried to install LilyPond-2.22.2, which is newer than
> the versions of Lilypond the program were developed with.  It does
> not work at all, however, and I get the error message: "The system
> cannot execute the specified program."  It does not matter what code
> I try to run.
> 
> What is the reason for this?

You are trying to use a 64bit program in a 32bit environment, which
always fails.

> What to do about it?

To get the most recent version I guess you have to compile LilyPond
*and all its dependencies* by yourself – and I'm not sure whether this
is possible at all.  Contrary to MacPorts, which supports quite
ancient Mac computers, I'm not aware of a similar environment for
Windows XP that provides many Unix packages for Windows.

A fundamental problem is that the memory provided by 32bit
applications is often not sufficient for larger LilyPond scores.  This
is not a problem on Windows XP per se but with *all* 32bit versions of
LilyPond.  This is one of the reasons for no longer providing 32bit
binaries for LilyPond.

In general, AFAIK, we have never tried to build LilyPond directly on
Windows, not to mention Windows XP.  Instead, we always did (and still
do) a cross compilation on GNU/Linux.

> What is the latest version of Lilypond that actually works on
> Windows XP?

Good question.  You might try the last 32bit binaries, which can be
found at

  http://lilypond.org/download/binaries/mingw/


     Werner