lmemsm

I've mentioned my build system before. I've been trying to find a good way to share the programs I've compiled for Windows, Linux, AIX, Android, etc. However, I still haven't found a good method to do so. Rather than continuing to wait until I find the perfect solution, I've decided to try a temporary solution that's very basic.

I've already been uploading the build scripts to the archive link at my LM Ports page ( http://www.distasis.com/cpp/lmports.htm ). I'm going to start adding some executables and libraries for Windows. I don't have an automated installation program at this point, so some manual work needs to be done to get programs to run. In order to run a program, you will need all the dependencies. So, you need to download the tarball (has txz extension) with the program you're interested in plus the tarballs with the dependency libraries aka dlls. The bldepend.txt file in the build script has a list of what dependencies are needed to build a program or library. The depends.txt file in the tarball package has a list of all the dlls needed for the program to run. Pick a directory on your system. ( I use \mingw\msys\ ) Unpack the required tarballs to the same directory (holding the executable program and libraries/dlls). ( This puts the programs and dlls in \mingw\msys\opt\bin ) Programs like 7zip, 7za, gzip, bsdtar can be used to unpack tarballs. You can run them from the command line or the msys bash shell. If it's a program with a GUI, you can also create a shortcut or run from the file explorer.

I use some tricks to make programs more portable including a couple of specialized libraries and some patches so that the programs don't have to run from the directory they're built for. I don't have those libraries uploaded and ready to share yet. For now, I'm using the standard libintl instead of my modified version. So, internationalization probably won't work well until I can switch to my libraries.

While I'm not interested in changing package managers/build systems, I'm open to suggestions on better/easier ways to make the programs available/accessible to people. The plan was to eventually put together an ISO with several programs and a GUI front-end plus more documentation on how the programs work, but I'm not far enough along in the project to do so yet.

It's a lot of work to try to port programs and keep the build scripts up-to-date. I've just been doing this for myself. So, don't expect any official support on the project. However, I would like to share some of the results with others in the chance that it might be useful to someone besides myself now. If you'd like to encourage the project or get more involved, you're welcome to do so from the CppDesign mailing list ( http://www.distasis.com/connect.htm ). I have Windows builds for several command line utilities, SDL, FLTK and pdcurses based programs and even an X Windows port.