ClanLib

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Installing ClanLib

Downloading | Installing on Linux | Pkgconfig | Installing on Windows |

Installing ClanLib on Linux/Windows

This part of the tutorial describes how to install the ClanLib-0.8.x on your Unix or Windows system. After reading these lines you should be well prepared to write your first application using ClanLib.


Downloading

If you decided to use ClanLib in your program the first step you should do is downloading necessary files from www.ClanLib.org. You need at least the library itself.

For Unix it's recommended to download latest ClanLib-0.8.x.tar.gz file. On Windows systems you'll probably have easier work with ClanLib-0.8.x.zip archive.


Installing on Linux

Unpack ClanLib-0.8.x.tar.gz to some folder (for examle /home/you/ClanLib-0.8.0). In this folder you can find INSTALL.linux file with latest installing informations. You should probably be able to find all necessary inrofmations reading next lines, but when you still got troubles INSTALL.linux is the first place you can find answers to your questions.

Your target is compiling ClanLib now. For compiling ClanLib you also need at least zlib, libjpg, libpng and pkgconfig. You can find downloading links for them at www.clanlib.org, but it's very probably that they are also part of your linux distribution (for example SuSE linux 9.1 contains everything you need).

You shouldn't have any problem with installing thesse external libraries. Usually the whole work is to dowload apropriate .tgz archive and to write 

../configure
make
make install

in the directory you have unpacked the archive to. If needed there are readme files in the directory where you can find help.

May be you haven't met pkg-config before. It's not a kind of graphic library like zlib, libjpg or libpng. Pkg-config is usefull program for recieveng informations about libraries installed on your system and ClanLib uses it for it's compilation. Don't worry it will be helpfull for us too. So here is a little description of it's behavior.

After succesfull installation of ClanLib you can find .pc files in /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig. For example clanApp-0.8.pc file containing informations about libclanApp-0.8.so.0. Pkg-config generates compilator options we'll need for example in our makefiles. You can find real world example in First Application tutorial (will be written soon). Pkg-config searches for .pc files in folders contained in PKG_CONFIG_PATH variable so I recomend you to add the following line to ./bashrc in your home directory: 

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

Now we're at last prepared to compile ClanLib itself. Go to the ClanLib's folder and execute configuration script: 

../configure

You'll recieve quite long list of messages from this script. Somewhere at the end you can find something like this: 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following modules will be built:
                        
	clanGL = yes
        clanSDL = yes
        clanApp = yes
        clanGUI = yes
        clanCore = yes
        clanSound = yes
        clanNetwork = yes
        clanSignals = yes
        clanDisplay = yes
        clanMikmod = yes
        clanVorbis = yes

        Build Documentation = yes
        Debug Build = no
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Configure done.

Type 'make' to compile ClanLib.

When you see "no" next to some of modules names (for example clanSDL = no), it means that ClanLib found that it's impossible to compile this module because of failed dependencies. In this case there should be some more detailed information about this in configure's message list. In our example the problem will probably be solved when you instal SDL library development packages to your system. I recomend you to make your system abele to compile all the ClanLib modules, but of course it's not necessary and alhough you see "clanVorbis = no" you can compile ClanLib and use it without problems utill you need this module. For compiling clanVorbis you'll need something like libogg and libogg-devel.

Now follow the last instruction of configure script and type 'make' to compile ClanLib. Then the last step is to type 'make install'.

The only problem I had on older systems after 'make' is typed was problem with too old XFree86. You need XFree86 4.3.0 or higher and of corse acceptable graphic card. When the problem is in XFree86 you'll see words like glXGetProcAddress in error messages of compilator.

If you have some another problems you can try to find solution in ClanLib mailing lists.


Installing on Windows

Of course the first step you have to do is unpacking ClanLib-0.8.x.zip file to some folder (C:\Development\ClanLib for example).

I have personal experience only with Visual Studio 6.0 or .net. If you need to compile and use ClanLib in Borland C++ Builder or somethink like this try to read INSTALL.xx file in the folder (C:\Development\ClanLib in our example), where xx is name you need (borland in this case).

Same as on Linux you'll need some additional libraries to compile ClanLib on Windows too. The easiest way of getting them is to download ..zip file called External Libraries from www.clanlib.org downloading section. Unpack External Libraries to another folder (C:\Development\ExternalLibraries for example).

If you are using Visual Studio 6.0 you'll have to do a little bit more probably. Your Visual Studio needs service pack 5 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/updates/sp/vs6/sp5) and Platform SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate) is requested too. If you have troubles with downloading whole Platform SDK because of it's size (something about 100 Mb) you can download only Debugging Tools which are only a part, but if you are able to download it all I recommend it.

Your Visual Studio needs to know where to find include and library files of your external libraries.

In Visual Studio 6.0 you can do this in Tools->Options->Directories. Here add to Include File's listbox appropriate path (C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\include in our example). Do the same in Library Files's listbox (here add C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\lib in our example). It's recomended to have this new paths on the top of the listboxes.

In Visual Studio 2003 .net you can do this in Tools->Options->Projects->VC++ Directories. Here add to Include File's listbox appropriate path (C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\include in our example). Do the same in Library Files's listbox (here add C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\lib in our example). It's recomended to have this new paths on the top of the listboxes.

Now you're nearly prepared to compile ClanLib. In the directory where you have unpacked ClanLib-0.8.x.zip to (C:\Development\ClanLib) you will find only one workspace and project called configure.dsw. It's configuration tool that wil generate the real ClanLib workspace and project files. Open this file (answer yes to the question if you're using .net) compile it, execute it and answer it's questions carefully. If you give some incorrect informations to this tool, you'll heve troubles with compilation. You'll be asked where to install ClanLib's include and headder files so you have to decide where you want to have them (C:\Development\CL_Include, C:\Development\CL_Lib for example). Then you should specify where are the ExternalLibraries include and header files (C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\include and C:\Development\ExternalLibraries\lib in our example).

After succesful running the configure, open the ClanLib.dsw (Visual Studio 6.0) or ClanLib.sln (Visual Studio .net) file. You'll see many different projects (clanApp, ClanDisplay ...). You need to compile at least ClanApp, ClanCore, ClanDisplay and ClanDisplay, but I recomed you to do all the work at once by using Batch Build. You can ignore wrnings you get during the compilation. The files are autamatically installed to the folder you specified in configure tool. So after a succesfull compilation you're done, you're prepared to write your first ClanLib application.