Any plan to compile and develop PN using VS Express?

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Any plan to compile and develop PN using VS Express?

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Started 1 year ago by horus
Latest reply from simon
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horus
Member

I've read this page (http://pnotepad.org/docs/dev/how_to_compile_pn) and dug up an old post (http://pnotepad.org/forums/topic/190 :p) and the question on whether it's possible to use VS Express to compile PN is still suspending in the air...

As a side-note, here's an article teaching people how to make WTL available in VC++ 2005 Express: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/wtl/WTLExpress.aspx

And my question? :p It is: is there any plan to make it possible to compile PN using free tool like VS Express?

I have some spare time (about 30 minutes per week :p) and if you like, I could try to see if I could compile PN using VS Express and possibly develop on it. If it's successful, I could also write out the steps how I get to it.

My next question is: "should I use VC++ 2005 Express or 2008 Express?" Or an alternate question is: "Is there any advantage to use VC++ 2008 Express"? Because PN is essentially a C++ programme while VS 2008 (Express) is using the *great feature* of .NET 3 but I don't see how this affects PN.

Any comment?

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

I'd love to have a set of clear instructions for getting PN building with VS2008 Express - note that PN is currently developed with 2008 so that's the most likely path to success with getting this to build.

I'm happy to accept patches that make it easier too.

If I had the time now that I had when I started PN I'd investigate moving away from WTL to something more realistically open source, but I'm not sure I can see that happening.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

According to http://sourceforge.net/projects/wtl/ (show project details link), WTL is using Common Public License. That means WTL should be already quite open, no? Or there's some trap in it?

So what would you like to do exactly? Seeing if we could build it in VS2008 Express as 1st phase, then moving it away from WTL in 2nd phase?

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

Yes, I should have been more clear. WTL itself is completely open source, but it relies on ATL which is not distributed with the Express editions of Visual Studio. This means that (without workarounds, which is what you're proposing to look into) you can't build PN with free (as in beer, or free as in speech for that matter) software - this puts off a lot of people from contributing.

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

Previous topics of relevance (not to put you off!):

http://pnotepad.org/forums/topic/190#post-690
http://pnotepad.org/forums/topic/61#post-225

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

If your worry is about WTL & ATL not being distributed with VS Express, I remember I was able to install it with "Platform SDK" years ago, using a procedure more or less like the one stated in my first post. I can't remember if I was able to make a WTL programme with that though.

But if your worry is about ATL's license which is not free (is it?), I have a copy of it that I could send to you if you like (because I don't have the patience to read it through :p) But I'm thinking, as WTL is free, do we still need to worry about underlying components' license?

> http://pnotepad.org/forums/topic/190#post-690
Seen already. :)

> http://pnotepad.org/forums/topic/61#post-225
Too long, so no patience to read through :p But I understand that people have problem with VS 2005 Express. That means I could go to 2008 directly. Why not!

About any alternative to WTL, wx-Widgets comes to my mind. I think other users had also mentioned it as well. I had tried wxDev-C++ to compile some examples. They are OK; look quite good in XP and Win7. But moving to wxDev-C++ would mean giving up a good visual tool like Visual Studio that you're certainly familiar with. And it would certainly take a lot of time to change from WTL to wxWidgets.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

Some news of the progression :)

With the help from WTL forum, I managed to make ATL and WTL into VC++ 2008 Express. Then I managed to compile some WTL samples with some fiddlings of my own (I'll give steps later at the right moment).

Then I tried to compile PN2 solution. Importing the current solution (ie open the .sln file) went smoothly. But when I built the solution, I got some errors.

Project scintilla:
pnwtl\scintilla\RegexSearch.cpp needs <boost/xpressive/xpressive.hpp>
but I can't find this hpp file anywhere in the hard disk. Actually, I can't even find "boost" directory in Visual Studio 2008 (not Express) in another computer.

Project ctagsnavigator:
pnwtl\taggers\ctagsnavigator\stdafx.h needs <boost/function.hpp>
same problem as above.

It seems like some files are missing in mercurial.

At the end of the build, I got some files generated in the "bin" directory. I'm not really sure what files the solution is supposed to generate, so I can't say what files can't be compiled by VC++ 2008 Express.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

I forgot to say that pn.exe is not generated as pnwtl\stdafx.h can't find 'boost/config.hpp'

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

Good work. Boost is an open source C++ library that's a separate download. See here for general build instructions:

http://pnotepad.org/docs/dev/how_to_compile_pn

Unless you're trying to build PyPN, you won't need to compile boost, just extract it somewhere on your disk. Lots of boost is header-only.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

Oh yeah, I forgot to re-read that page again, mea culpa :p

OK, after some modifications, it can build without error. I figured out that the following files are generated (while the other files are provided in the bin directory).
ctagsnavigator.dll
pn.exe
pnlang.dll
pnse.dll
SciLexer.dll

I moved them to original pn2 folder for test. However, upon running pn.exe, some errors occured. Event log indicates "error syntax in Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest file". I figured out that I have to download vcredist_x86.exe from the following page and install it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2051a0c1-c9b5-4b0a-a8f5-770a549fd78c

You would say, "that's the same version 9.0.30729.4148 as those files in the Microsoft.VC90.CRT folder". Yeah. There're probably some other files needed but I still can't figure out what they are. I think they're probably ATL files but I need more time to check it. So the quickest solution is to install the distributable :p

Once installed, pn.exe runs. If you have some test-suite, I could try them as well.

BTW, once the procedure is written, I'll send it to you through email, OK?

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

That's great news, excellent! Rather than e-mail, feel free to just add a new page to the docs wiki about using 2k8 express to build. Thanks for your hard work.

If you built debug, it may be that you needed the debug runtime libraries as I only ship the release ones.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

No, I was building release.

In order to get ATL, I use WDK 7.1 instead of SDK that you stated in your web page. WDK contains ATL 7.1. And that's why I think newer ATL dll's are needed.

I prefer sending you the doc first so you could check if it's OK for you. Actually, in order to make it build, I had to add
#pragma comment(lib, "atlthunk.lib")
at the beginning of the stdafx.h file in Pn project.

That line means we specify that library file during linking. I still have to figure out why the IDE can't see it while the other .lib files in the same folder as atlthunk.lib are loaded without problem!?

And I have no idea if adding such line in the source file would affect building PN2 in VC++ 2008 full edition.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

I've done another test. This time I followed exactly the "How to Compile PN" page. Same products, same versions except WTL, ie:
VS 2008 Full edition (not Express edition), not even with SP1
WSDK v6.1
Boost 1.42

But for WTL, I get the latest one as written in the page.

Then after building, I copied those 5 files (ctagsnavigator.dll, pn.exe, pnlang.dll, pnse.dll & SciLexer.dll) in an existing PN2 folder (containing 2.1.4.2191 version of PN2) and ran it. I got exactly the same error as I stated above when it was compiled by Express edition. Then once again, after I installed vcredist_x86.exe, the error went away.

So it's pretty sure that the requirement to install vcredist_x86.exe was not due to the use of Express edition but some other factor.

I don't think WTL is the factor. I notice that there's a file called pnlang.dll generated by the compilation but it was absent in 2.1.4.2191. So I think this might simply come from PN2's source code. If you could tell me what revision number (in Mercurial) you used to build version 2.1.4.2191, I could do another test to see if my theory is correct.

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

Ok, so my distribution is definitely built with SP1. If you didn't build with SP1 then I think you would need a different version of the runtime, so that would explain at least that much.

Did you install the SP1 for the Express version?

To get 2191, update to the mercurial tag rel-2_1_4.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

My Express had SP1 integrated and has all successive hotfixes applied. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: that doesn't quite explain the mystery :/

That means there are three trails to check what caused the dependency on the whole VC redist package:
1. SP1
2. mercurial tag rel-2_1_4
3. SP1 AND mercurial tag rel-2_1_4

Luckily I'm using a VM so this is possible. I'll tell you later what I get.

Posted 1 year ago #
horus
Member

I've done all the tests below but all the generated pn.exe need the redist package:
* Express & rel-2_1_4
* Full "SP0" & rel-2_1_4
* Full SP1 & current revision
* Full SP1 & rel-2_1_4

So it's pretty clear that the dependency on the redist package isn't a result of using Express edition.

There might be some *hidden settings* other than those stated in the "How to Compile PN" page. Or maybe I was wrong on copying those five files into PN folder to do the test?

I think I could leave this *redist package dependency episode* aside and concentrate on the *Express main story* :)

Posted 1 year ago #
simon
PN Developer

Agreed, let's worry about that later!

I don't think it was wrong to copy the files, it's just somehow the version of the runtime I'm using is different to yours. I'm not too worried about that, as long as PN runs for you when you build it.

Posted 1 year ago #

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