Compiling 0.5 from source

[Rackle]

NOTE. These messages relate to RC1. Scroll down to locate the messages posted after RC2 was released.

I'm unsure whether I should install Silly or not. I did download it but the directory structure in unclear (not as clear as the Xerces dependency .zip anyway). Where should it be extracted to?

With the source and dependencies extracted I searched for the the .sln projects? I read the cegui_mk2/readme without a solution. I tried to read cegui_mk2/ReadMe.html but the link to cegui_mk2/documentation/api_reference/index.html is invalid since that directory is empty; maybe it should point to the online documentation. Then I read cegui_mk2/makefiles/premake/readme and figured it out. A note within the cegui_mk2/readme might have helped make it clearer.

The fifth paragraph in cegui_mk2/makefiles/premake/readme contains a typo: "directory you your PATH" should read "directory to your PATH"

cegui_mk2/readme mentions that Freetype2 and PCRE are required libraries. Maybe it should also mention that these are already included within the source package.

Other than these minor problems/suggested modifications, everything compiled smoothly. Great job.

[spannerman]

I also didnt find it so obvious that premake was now needed in order to build the latest source (where was this announced?). I've been manually hacking the CEGUI.sln solution found in '\cegui_mk2\makefiles\win32\MSVC++' all this time

So, for the less attentive ones like me, to compile the 0.5.0 Release Candidate 1 on MSVC:

Get the source code and the dependencies needed for your version of MSVC.

There’s a readme in your ‘\cegui_mk2\makefiles\premake’ folder; read it. Its simple actually, the steps I took are:

Download Premake 3.1

Unzip the premake.exe file into your ‘\cegui_mk2\makefiles\premake’ folder.

Run the build_vs200*.bat batch file in this folder. It generates the Solution; use it to build the library.

Remember to edit CEGUIConfig.h if you want a default XmlParser specified, otherwise you need to supply this info when you create a new instance of Cegui::System. E.g:

Code: Select all

#   define CEGUI_DEFAULT_XMLPARSER XercesParser

Run the build_samples_vs200*.bat batch file in this folder. It generates the Solution for the samples; use it to build them.

Copy the dependency dll’s and the dll's from 'cegui_mk2/bin' to cegui_mk2/Samples/bin' to run them.

[Dalfy]

Silly is not required at all. We started silly because we did not find any image loading library that was simple and adapted to the new license of cegui. Silly is only needed for the OpenGL Renderer. You can leave without it.


The build process now use Premake under win32 and will use it from now on.
The documentation is for sure something we need to improve and it's going to be our priority one for the days after the final release.

[scriptkid]

FYI: a link to this thread has been added to the download section for new users.

[spannerman]

I added a point saying to remember to define a default XMLParser, because otherwise you need to supply this info when creating the System instance.

Just a note about this for the devs - if you leave the default parser (ExpatParser) and then try to run an app without any of the ExpatParser dll's, you get a nasty crash with no error message. It happens via setupXMLParser in DynamicModule(const String& name).

Code: Select all

    d_handle = DYNLIB_LOAD(d_moduleName.c_str());

    // check for library load failure
    if (!d_handle)
        throw GenericException(
            "DynamicModule::DynamicModule - Failed to load module '" +
            d_moduleName + "': " + getFailureString());


This exception doesnt seem to get thrown, or it just doesnt get logged.

Anyway, while we are on the subject, could anyone recommend a parser out of XercesParser, ExpatParser, LibxmlParser or TinyXMLParser?

[kittyfish_1981]

Not support MSVC++ 6.0???

[Dalfy]

Yes we stop supporting MSVC 6 officially. But CEGUI will probably still compiles in 0.6 using STLPORT.

[Rackle]

The following messages should all relate to RC2.


After downloading and extracting CEGUI-0.5.0-RC2.zip, the source code for Windows, I renamed the root directory from CEGUI-0.5-0-RC2 to cegui_mk2. This made it easier to install the MSVC++ 8 Xerces-C dependency package; that zip file contains the cegui_mk2/dependencies directory structure.

After generating the .sln files with CEGUI_mk2/makefiles/premake/build_samples_vs2005.bat and CEGUI_mk2/makefiles/premake/build_vs2005.bat I batch compiled everything except the projects with the ReleaseWithSymbols|Win32 configurations.

To run the samples I copied CEGUI_mk2/dependencies/bin/*.* and CEGUI_mk2/bin/*.* to CEGUI_mk2/Samples/bin.