This is a windows build guide for the Project Hamster time tracking tool.

I hope it’s helpful to people out there who want to build this app on windows.

Many thanks to Martins Polakovs who shared his hard work on these build steps with me.

If you have any tweaks or improvements on this guide, drop me an email and I’ll roll your improvements into this guide.

Required tools to build hamster applet:
Git client:
http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list?q=label:Featured
(I used Full installer for official Git for Windows)
Python:
http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/python-2.7.2.msi
PyGTK for windows:
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/pygtk/2.24/pygtk-all-in-one-2.24.2.win32-py2.7.msi
Inno Setup:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/download.php/is-unicode.exe
Py2exe:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/py2exe/files/py2exe/0.6.9/py2exe-0.6.9.win32-py2.7.exe/download

To run hamster applet, gtk runtime is required
GTK for Windows:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtk-win/files/latest/download

Steps To build:

Create a directory c:\hamster-src
From ‘Git Bash’ (Start / Git Bash) run the following commands…

Check out hamster source code:

 $ cd c:\hamster-src
 $ git clone git://git.gnome.org/hamster-applet
 $ cd hamster-applet

Create branch ‘win-port’ with specified revision 44218bac2a976057ccf0cb1d490ad408cc8e4b1c

$ git checkout -b win-port 44218bac2a976057ccf0cb1d490ad408cc8e4b1c

Save patch from http://bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=145966 to c:\hamster-src\patch-1.patch
Apply patch to the code:

 $ git apply ../patch-1.patch

Create file c:\hamster-src\hamster-applet\defs.py with following content:

 DATA_DIR = "C:\\hamster-src\\hamster-applet\\data"
 LIB_DIR = "@LIBDIR@"
 VERSION = "@VERSION@"
 PACKAGE = "@PACKAGE@"
 PYTHONDIR = "C:\\Python27"
 IS_WINDOWS = True

To run hamster from source, do:

 $ cd c:\hamster-src\hamster-applet\win
 $ c:\python27\python.exe hamster-win.py

Go to win directory

 $ cd c:\hamster-src\hamster-applet\win

Edit build.bat change line:

 PATH=%PATH%;c:\gtk+\bin

to line:

 PATH=%PATH%;C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\runtime\bin

Adjust python for your version. For python 2.7 change line:

 c:\python25\python.exe setup_win32.py py2exe

to line:

 c:\python27\python.exe setup_win32.py py2exe

If you are on a 64bit windows, change line:

 "c:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5\iscc" /F"hamster-setup" hamster.iss

to line:

 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Inno Setup 5\iscc" /F"hamster-setup" hamster.iss

Edit setup_win32.py and add gio to the includes: line…

opts = {
    'py2exe': {
    'packages': ['hamster'],
    'includes': 'pango,atk,gobject,cairo,pangocairo,gio',
    'dll_excludes': [
    'iconv.dll','intl.dll','libatk-1.0-0.dll',
    'libgdk_pixbuf-2.0-0.dll','libgdk-win32-2.0-0.dll',
    'libglib-2.0-0.dll','libgmodule-2.0-0.dll',
    'libgobject-2.0-0.dll','libgthread-2.0-0.dll',
    'libgtk-win32-2.0-0.dll','libpango-1.0-0.dll',
    'libpangowin32-1.0-0.dll','libcairo-2.dll',
    'libpangocairo-1.0-0.dll','libpangoft2-1.0-0.dll',
 ]

From windows cmd prompt (Start / cmd.exe) run the following command to build hamster package:

 $ build.bat

Done!
hamster-setup.exe should be in the c:\hamster-src\hamster-applet\win\Output directory

Fling me an email if you have success with this process and especially if you have improvements of your own to add to it!