A primer for new C++ developer volunteers on Win XP

[selden]

My understanding is that the official builds of v1.5.0 prereleases have been made using Visual Studio 2005 Express.

Building Celestia with VS2008 does not work.

The Celestia WikiBook provides links to the VS2005 download pages at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/D ... 2_platform

[cartrite]

Selden,
The link on Wiki brings you to a 2005 download page but when you click on the download link it redirects you to download 2008. For now, this one takes you to the 2005 download link.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/2005/d ... fault.aspx
cartrite

[selden]

Thanks for pointing out the problem.

I've updated the Web install link to point to the vs2005 page.

The disk install link seems to be OK.

[Chuft-Captain]

Thanks guys.

I suspect my machine probably doesn't yet have all the pre-requisites for installing the IDE, so I was hoping to download the C++ install package and install it later. Unfortunately this link appears to be one of these "web installs" which M$ seems to like to use.

Very frustrating, but I might have to put this on hold for now.

Thanks for the link anyway.

[selden]

CC,

The WikiBook page includes a link to an MS page which lets you download an ISO disk image of the VS2005 installation kit.

[Chuft-Captain]

Excellent, that's exactly what I need Selden.

It might be a while before I can get my machine up to spec, but at least now I can download now, and defer the actual install until later.

Thanks for that.

Cheers
CC

[t00fri]

CC,

The WikiBook page includes a link to an MS page which lets you download an ISO disk image of the VS2005 installation kit.

Thanks,

would anyone know for sure whether this ISO includes the Service Pack SP1 of the VS C++ 2005 Express compiler? This is offered on the WEB download but no comments on the ISO download page!!

F.

[selden]

Sorry: I don't know, but I suspect it does not include the patches.

[Chuft-Captain]

CC,

The WikiBook page includes a link to an MS page which lets you download an ISO disk image of the VS2005 installation kit.

Thanks,

would anyone know for sure whether this ISO includes the Service Pack SP1 of the VS C++ 2005 Express compiler? This is offered on the WEB download but no comments on the ISO download page!!

F.

Will this do? --- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

[EDIT: I may have mis-understood you Fridger, you actually want SP1 of the compiler, not the SDK, yes??? ]

... however, I assume it's advisable to also install teh SP1 of the SDK, so maybe this link will still be useful to you.

[Chuft-Captain]

A silly question... what's better to use : .IMG or .ISO ???

[t00fri]

Thanks Chuft,

I meant the SP1 of the VS C++ 2005 Express compiler. But it is also not stated what is exactly on the CD ISO that I have downloaded and burnt just now.

Bye Fridger

[cartrite]

Thanks Chuft,

I meant the SP1 of the VS C++ 2005 Express compiler. But it is also not stated what is exactly on the CD ISO that I have downloaded and burnt just now.

Bye Fridger

I'm not sure what is on the iso but the web version was without sp1. It got updated the next day to sp1 by windows update though.
cartrite

[Epimetheus]

THANKS PAOLO! I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insights,it should save me a lot of time! I've just built the source for QT 4 to run with VS 2005 and just downloaded the Celestia source SVN tree, so your instructions will be put to good use. I'll let you know how it goes!

Be sure to see Chris' announcement regarding new SVN version control software! (quoted below)

Celestia has now switched to using Subversion (SVN) for source code control. The CVS repository still exists, but no new changes will be committed there. Anyone working on Celestia or interested in using the latest version must use SVN.

posted by chris

APOLLONIAN: Check out the devguide.txt file in the celestia folder of the source distribution. It lists a number of the main classes used by Celestia.

[Epimetheus]

While I have no idea what this fancy CVS software is good for, I do it quite differently on my Windows XP laptop:

Since I have installed a layer of CYGWIN Linux on top of XP, a little (but clever) script does ALL of the following actions, when I type its name ('cel') into a CYGWIN zsh terminal:

Bye Fridger

Hello Fridger,
You seem like the goto guy on this stuff: I'm trying to put together some documentation for setting up the development environment for compiling Celestia using VS 2005. I realize that some folks have included some very detailed and excellent instructions on how to do so, but I've also noticed that many of those posts are several years old.

Is it true that the v6.1 of MS Platform SDK does not support MFC? Can Celestia compile without the dependencies on previous versions of the MS Platform SDK? From the examples I've seen for setting up a "celvars.bat" file, many point to bin, lib and include directories in the old Visual C++ 2003 Toolkit and older MS Platform SDKs. Is this due to the need for MFC support? Many of the necessary files are included with the new SDK, but files like libc.lib are not. LIBC, as you know, has been replaced by the thread-safe libcmt.lib. I've seen a number of posts regarding a link conflicts between libc.lib and libcmt.lib.

I would be interested in seeing how you've setup your PATH, LIB and INCLUDE on your machine (i.e. celvars.bat), since you're running XP and I assume VS2005? I've seen posts where some have set as little as three or four variables and others where folks pulling every dev and system lib possible. There doesn't seem to be consistence here and I'm trying to boil down to what actual external dependencies are required by Celestia for successful builds via the VS IDE. My point is similar to C++ programmers who pull the entire std namespace into file when only std::string is needed for example.

BTW, I'm also running Cygwin/Xwin w/ Qt3 support. I wanted to run the GNU C++ compiler for my projects at school, so setting up the VS environment has been a bit confusing. I'm used to Emacs or VIM and GNU++, and I've only written about four true applications in C++ and nothing coming close to the scope of Celestia. I'm a newb.

The script you wrote sounds perfect!

Keep up the good work!

[t00fri]

Hello Fridger,
You seem like the goto guy on this stuff: I'm trying to put together some documentation for setting up the development environment for compiling Celestia using VS 2005. I realize that some folks have included some very detailed and excellent instructions on how to do so, but I've also noticed that many of those posts are several years old.

Is it true that the v6.1 of MS Platform SDK does not support MFC? Can Celestia compile without the dependencies on previous versions of the MS Platform SDK? From the examples I've seen for setting up a "celvars.bat" file, many point to bin, lib and include directories in the old Visual C++ 2003 Toolkit and older MS Platform SDKs. Is this due to the need for MFC support? Many of the necessary files are included with the new SDK, but files like libc.lib are not. LIBC, as you know, has been replaced by the thread-safe libcmt.lib. I've seen a number of posts regarding a link conflicts between libc.lib and libcmt.lib.

I am actually not competent, as to special issues with VS2005, VS2008. The reason is simple: since more than 5 years I am compiling Celestia under XP with the commercial version VS++ 2003.net and never found a reason to change compilers. I also use the GUI version and the corresponding .vcproj project files. Since I am using Linux and Windows on a completely parallel level, I do all my shell scripting under XP on the CYGWIN layer, including the sync process (=> rsync) between my various Linux and Windows machines in my intranet.

In any case of compilation under Windows, one has to watch out wrto libc issues, eventually using /NODEFAULTLIB:libc on the commandline!

I would be interested in seeing how you've setup your PATH, LIB and INCLUDE on your machine (i.e. celvars.bat), since you're running XP and I assume VS2005? I've seen posts where some have set as little as three or four variables and others where folks pulling every dev and system lib possible. There doesn't seem to be consistence here and I'm trying to boil down to what actual external dependencies are required by Celestia for successful builds via the VS IDE. My point is similar to C++ programmers who pull the entire std namespace into file when only std::string is needed for example.

Since I use exclusively .vcproj files this is not so easy to document. You just have to sort out where your '.' directory of the compilation is. Then you characterize the position of your external libs and inc directories with relative path notation, like e.g. ..\..\lib.
Most required system libs are automatically added by my VS++ GUI setup.

In my Celestia.vcproj (located in the src/celestia directory), I got these relevant lines, for example:

AdditionalOptions="/D "CELX=enable" /D "
SPICE=enable" /D "LUA_VER=0x050100""

AdditionalIncludeDirectories="..;..\..\inc\libjpeg;..\..\inc\libpng;..\..\inc\libz;
"..\..\inc\lua-5.1";..\..\inc;..\..\inc\libintl;..\..\inc\spice"

AdditionalDependencies="odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib comctl32.lib
opengl32.lib glu32.lib Winmm.lib libjpeg.lib libpng1.lib zlib.lib lua5.1.lib
intl.lib cel_3ds.lib cel_engine.lib cel_math.lib cel_txf.lib cel_utils.lib vfw32.lib"

OutputFile="..\..\Celestia.exe"

AdditionalLibraryDirectories=".,..\..\lib,..\cel3ds\Release,..\celengine\Release,
..\celmath\Release,..\celtxf\Release,..\celutil\Release"

But here you mileage will substantially vary, since there are different ways of setting up the project files. My custom library directory 'lib' (PNG, JPEG, zlib, spice,...) is in the root directory of the Celestia sources. There is also the 'inc' subdirectory with all the include files in separate subdirs.

F.

[Epimetheus]

Thanks, Fridger, great information! Much appreciated.

[Epimetheus]

In my Celestia.vcproj (located in the src/celestia directory), I got these relevant lines, for example:

AdditionalOptions="/D "CELX=enable" /D "
SPICE=enable" /D "LUA_VER=0x050100""

AdditionalIncludeDirectories="..;..\..\inc\libjpeg;..\..\inc\libpng;..\..\inc\libz;
"..\..\inc\lua-5.1";..\..\inc;..\..\inc\libintl;..\..\inc\spice"

AdditionalDependencies="odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib comctl32.lib
opengl32.lib glu32.lib Winmm.lib libjpeg.lib libpng1.lib zlib.lib lua5.1.lib
intl.lib cel_3ds.lib cel_engine.lib cel_math.lib cel_txf.lib cel_utils.lib vfw32.lib"

OutputFile="..\..\Celestia.exe"

AdditionalLibraryDirectories=".,..\..\lib,..\cel3ds\Release,..\celengine\Release,
..\celmath\Release,..\celtxf\Release,..\celutil\Release"

But here you mileage will substantially vary, since there are different ways of setting up the project files. My custom library directory 'lib' (PNG, JPEG, zlib, spice,...) is in the root directory of the Celestia sources. There is also the 'inc' subdirectory with all the include files in separate subdirs.

F.

Well, I sat down with my Venti Latte, read my compiler manual, and finally got Celestia to compile from the latest r4240. I took a SYSTEMATIC approach! The current release is out of whack with some of the downloads and I was stepping on myself by reverting vsproj files back and forth in the wrong sequence. There are some excellent instructions regarding compiling Celestia on the boards, unfortunately, it's 2008! Some of the posts date back to 2002 and the Wiki docs need to be updated. I did have to /NODEFAULTLIB:libc. That would mean there's a deprecated dependency on libc.lib within the app at this point. The thread-safe libcmt.lib has replaced libc.lib C library in current MS IDEs and DEV environs.

Thanks for all your help!

[t00fri]

congrats!

F.

[Epimetheus]

congrats!

F.

Bitte doch mal!

[cartrite]

I did have to /NODEFAULTLIB:libc. That would mean there's a deprecated dependency on libc.lib within the app at this point. The thread-safe libcmt.lib has replaced libc.lib C library in current MS IDEs and DEV environs.

I found that this was only needed when compiling from the command line with makerelease.bat and when compiling QT4 with Windows. I don't need to change anything if I compile with celestia.vcproj using the MS2005/2008 C++Express GUI without QT4 code.
cartrite