Re: Progress with ParaGUI

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Hi Coop,

D. Cooper Stevenson wrote:

> Your SDL progress is really tops; canning the SDL library installation process 
> is no mean feat. 

On Windows, at least. It was already pretty much done for me wrt RPM 
packages; the spec files were already there and so it was trivial to 
create the packages.

> I will create a setup document as soon as the tarball is out of the oven.

As far as the RPM packages go, it is just the usual: "rpm -ivh" or "rpm 
-Uvh", as appropriate. I will upload the source and i586 binary packages 
later on today, if all goes well.

For Windows, I've been making some light documentation as I go along, 
and it looks something like this (though more detail could be filled in):

GnuWin32 Glibc Installation
(1) Download Glibc setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libgw32c.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path from "C:\Program 
Files\GnuWin32" to wherever
you have installed MinGW32 (typically "C:\Mingw"). Note that the 
GnuWin32 stuff meshes
harmlessly (at least on the face of things) with the MinGW32 stuff; this 
is not
particularly surprising, since both are native Win32 libs with 
non-conflicting names, and
which have compatible directory structures.

Zlib Installation
(1) Download Zlib setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.

Libpng Installation
(1) Download Libpng setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libpng.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.

Freetype Installation
(1) Download Freetype setup (sources not necessary) from:
	http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/freetype.htm
(2) Run setup program. Change install path as above (in the Glibc 
instructions),
if necessary.
(3) Find the 'freetype2' directory in your 'include' directory. Move the
'freetype' subdirectory of the 'freetype2' directory up one level so 
that it is in the
'include' directory. Make sure that the 'freetype2' directory is empty, 
and then
delete it.

SDL_Image is not necessary at this time.
Expat can be (and is, if you use the forthcoming ParaGUI installer) part 
of ParaGUI's internal
implementation.
OpenGL is not necessary at this time.


I also recorded some notes regarding ParaGUI building, but it is a bit 
of a mess. And, of course, the MinGW32 sections of the 
'doc/INSTALL-win.txt' document are highly relevant, since I have already 
provided some notes regarding the setup of MinGW32 and SDL. I will 
provide an installer for the ParaGUI libs and headers, so that folks 
don't have to play around with the build process like I did.

> In short, when I think about the progress we're making it makes me shake my 
> head a little and thing, "it's a good thing." This is sweet, Eric!

Thanks. In spite of all the fights I had with the linker (is it just me, 
or are "libtoolized" builds almost always more of a hindrance than a 
help?), I have now successfully built ParaGUI under MinGW32. All that 
remains is just to package it up in a Windows installer, __my next step.

I am very optimistic about the choice of using ParaGUI for the SDL 
interface, especially now that I played around with some of the ParaGUI 
test/example programs this afternoon. I think things are going to work 
out quite well....

Eric

P.S. I am going to try to have a fresh source tarball and Windows 
installer for Xconq available this evening. I have to take care of some 
ANSI C++ build issues under MinGW32 first. When ready, this will 
probably be the last prerelease not to have ParaGUI hooked in.