aven fails to run on Windows 11

[Philip Sargent]

https://survex.com/download.html Selected Microsoft Windows Downloaded Downloads: installer Microsoft Windows Installer [92103K] +

Installed using defaults onto my Win11 laptop. Installed fine, but when I ran it (from Programs menu) I got ave_.exe Bad Image C:\Program Files (x86)\Survex\libvpl-2.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. ... Error status 0xc0e90002

[Philip Sargent]

1.4.21 also fails: libgdal-38.dll is not designed to run on windows...

[Philip Sargent]

1.4.20 also fails: liblz4.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error.

ALso I get a popup pointing me to ​https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/security/threat-malware-protection/smart-app-control-has-blocked-part-of-this-app

AND Windows blocked the uninstall program because it thought it was unsafe. So I can't uninstall 1.4.20

[Philip Sargent]

1.4.19 also fails. libgobject-2.0-0.dll at fault this time and librsvg-2.2.dll, libx264-165.dll and a popup saying parts of this app have been blocked because Windows can't tell where they came from.

[Philip Sargent]

1.4.18 won't run aven either, this time it is libabsl_time_zone_2505.0.0.dll

BUT cavern does seem to be working, as tunnelX is now running and can import a .svx file:

C:\Users\phili\Documents\tunnel>C:\"Program Files (x86)"\Survex\cavern.exe --help cavern - Survex 1.4.18

Usage: cavern [OPTION]... [SURVEY_DATA_FILE]

-o, --output=OUTPUT set location for output files -q, --quiet only show brief summary (-qq for errors only) -s, --no-auxiliary-files do not create .err file -w, --warnings-are-errors turn warnings into errors

--log log output to .log file

-v, --3d-version=3D_VERSION specify the 3d file format version to output

--help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit

[Olly Betts]

It sounds like it's unhappy that we're not using code signing, but Microsoft demand a recurring payment to be able to do that so I'm not going to start doing that. If someone who already has a code signing certificate wants to take over distributing builds, please speak up.

Only aven and survexport (and 3dtopos which is really just survexport now) use GDAL and the huge DLL dependency chain it pulls in, so cavern and other tools are much less likely to trigger over-zealous security checks.

We could build without GDAL, but that's means losing functionality (currently geodata overlays and exporting to shapefile, but we're likely to use GDAL more in the future).

The real stupidity here is that the installer is built in github actions, i.e. on hardware Microsoft own and run. That does at least mean that it's fairly safe to bypass this security scanning if that's possible to do.