Just curious to know what the simplest environment for development in gramps. I, like 65% of computer users use windows, and I have honestly gotten to the point where I just give up. Tired of being referred to work instructions that are 20+ pages long that either don’t apply to a Windows environment, or are so outdated that I spend hours using google to pile one mess on top of another.
If you want something for Microsoft Windows, I suggest using the instructions on the Gramps for Windows with MSYS2 wiki page that aims to guide people on How to use MSYS2 to run latest Gramps development version from source in 64-bit Windows.
While the frustration’s still fresh in your mind 
please consider helping by providing specific feedback about what have you tried for example which work instructions that is 20 pages long… do you mean? Also did you find the Developers portal on the wiki?
Keep in mind that all the wiki pages have been written by volunteers just like yourself and improved overtime, do you have a wiki account?
A heads up that the MSYS2 wiki is also out-of-date. If you decide to go the MSYS2 route (benefit being you will be have an environment where you can build the AIO installer), refer to the readme in the AIO folder of the branch you’re working in.
Gramps can also be developed in the WSL environment in Windows with the advantage that it’s closer to the Linux documentation found in the wiki, and the limitation that you will not be able to build the AIO installer for Windows.
Another option is to create a VM with a Linux distro of your choice.
What’s easy? That depends on what you’re familiar with and what you are able to troubleshoot, or find help with. What makes it easier for everyone, as @emyoulation said, is to improve the wiki as we learn.
Sorry - I should have been more explicit in my reply. I am interested to know what environment people use because I don’t think Windows is going to work for doing plugins/addons. I did attempt using the Msys development environment, and very soon into the instructions you will quickly find them to be out of date. I am usually the one to re-write instructions, but I was more eager to start developing, so I abandoned them and used google, which was a much faster path forward. I am now able to build, debug and run unit tests, but the Msys environment is not a simple one to juggle, since I already had gitbash, msys has like 3 internal environments, I can’t even count how many python environments I have, between windows, gitbash, the three within msys, and then multiple virtual environments. Oh, and I run as a user other than my own, so I don’t scrog my database, so that’s good to basically double the number of environments.
Couple that with the fact that I have my second user (gramps/dev) doing development on 61, and I run my personal family tree with 60, and you can’t run 60 and 61 side-by-side, I can’t develop an add-on for 60. My backup plan was to develop my addon for 61 and hope for the best, but these instructions are pretty worthless to a windows developer. https://gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php/Addons_development#Develop_your_addon
My path forward is to throw all of that away, and try to build a development container - it should help keep things much more sane, and probably be better for others to point them to a dev container that just has everything they need already in it. I guess the best path forward is to reverse-engineer what container github uses to build gramps and move forward from there.
My environment is able to build core fixes, but not addons. My current path forward is to abandon addon development and focus strictly on core development, and bypass the entire gramps PR system and get what I need from my personal fork.
If you are interested to know the specific issue I ran across, I pulled a clean maintenance/gramps61 branch from core, and a clean maintenance/gramps61 branch from addons-source. I then renamed the addons-source directory to “plugins”, and moved it to: /c/Users/gramps/AppData/Roaming/gramps/gramps61/plugins/
Which may have worked except I am juggling multiple features, so I am going to need to start juggling multiple plugins directories on top of multiple core directories.
ERROR: Plugin file C:\Users\gramps\AppData\Roaming/gramps/gramps61/plugins/SurnameMappingGramplet/SurnameMappingGramplet.py has a version of “6.0” which is invalid for Gramps “6.1.0-beta1”.
2026-10-04 09:25:50.353: WARNING: _manager.py: line 339: Plugin error (from ‘htmlview’): No GTK html plugin found
I am not fond of plugins. I get that plugins are a way to allow users to add in their own code, but I am just not feeling the love for them. I went down the path to use gramps over paying money for family tree software that has a lot of these features just baked in thinking I would just add the features I like because it’s open source, and while I am interested in contributing to the cause, I find myself at a crossroads where I want to part ways and find my own personal path forward.
Sorry for the rant.
Versions of Gramps can be configured side-by-side; search for GRAMPSHOME on this forum and the wiki to see how that can keep your configuration and data separated.
Use Git worktrees to set up isolated source trees for gramps60, gramps61 and master. Worktrees might be useful to you to keep multiple features completely separate, no matter which branch.
I appreciate the assist, but I already hate git, and I am currently following a path forward to get what I want without plugins/addons.
I will likely attempt making a build container using WSL, but it will likely be half-hearted at best.
Thanks again,
-Kevin
One more option was shared on the forum recently: Gramps-workspace - a containerized development environment for Gramps . Haven’t tried it myself, but it sounds like it’s what you’re looking for.
Wow, that sounds awesome - definitely trying that out.