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New Allegro Installator for MinGW
Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Hello everyone.

Ive put together a new automated GUI installer for Allegro. It also installs (if wanted) AllegroGL, AllegroFont and FBlend. I need you to test it.

All you need to do is double click the installer, select your wanted libs and then select your MinGW directory. It does the rest. ;)

Get it here.

EDIT: Damn it. All I need is a place to upload this thing, dragoon is down. I will try again in the morning. But for now I am going to sleep...

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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You can get it here on my site ;)

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Yes, thank you for the webspace Baf. :D

Everyone start checking that stuff out! ;D

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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Other than it uses nullsoft installer (which, anyway, is a personal preference), you did a good job :).

Some suggestions:

Add shortcuts for the documentation.

You seemed to static link the grabber and demo executables. Dynamic link + upx everything (probably not the debug dll, since upx would remove all debug info) would reduce the package size.

And there's an alfont directory, but it's almost empty (only some docs) and the includes are not anywhere.

Add link to the official Allegro site, too.

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Quote:

Add shortcuts for the documentation.

noted. Will be in next version.

Quote:

You seemed to static link the grabber and demo executables. Dynamic link + upx everything (probably not the debug dll, since upx would remove all debug info) would reduce the package size.

Huh? Please explain. Whats a upx? I didnt include all of the compiled examples because the download would shoot up to 30 megs ;).

Quote:

And there's an alfont directory, but it's almost empty (only some docs) and the includes are not anywhere.

Ooopsie :) forgot to include those. Will be in next version.

Quote:

Add link to the official Allegro site, too.

noted. Will be in next version.

Thanks for your input oscar.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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Installamatator?

UPX = The Ultimate Packer for eXecutables

Will you be adding sound libraries?

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Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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Quote:

Quote:
You seemed to static link the grabber and demo executables. Dynamic link + upx everything (probably not the debug dll, since upx would remove all debug info) would reduce the package size.
Huh? Please explain. Whats a upx? I didnt include all of the compiled examples because the download would shoot up to 30 megs .

You compiled the grabber and the demo program with the static version of allegro. Since you already have to include the dll, why not use it?

X-G already pointed what upx. Just note that it can be used with dll's, too.

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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OOooo.. I will have to take a look at this UPX stuff... :D

Quote:

Will you be adding sound libraries?

I was going to add FMOD for sound. HawkNL for networking. And one of our GUI packages for GUI, But then the whole installer got much larger. If enough of you think that the cost of the download size would be worthwhile (bloating the download to ~15-20 megs) then tell me and I will expand it to include them. :)

Regardless... This installer should make setting up quick workstations a breeze.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
avatar

Net install?

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Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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InnoSetup, with one of its addons (ISTool), supports net install.

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Or maybe two versions. A net' one and a local one. Gentoo style ;).

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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You know, most net installs can be turned into local ones by simply downloading all the packages but not actually installing any of them. :P

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Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

Marcello
Member #1,860
January 2002
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Quote:

Other than it uses nullsoft installer (which, anyway, is a personal preference), you did a good job .

I haven't downloaded this myself (9megs? I already have allegro =P), but you should use the modern UI version of nsis. That one looks really slick (better than most, including inno).

NSIS also supports net install/webinstall but I haven't messed with it myself:

features list said:

Support for web installation, file patching

The NSIS distribution includes a set of plug-ins that allow you to download files from the internet, make internet connections, patch existing files and more.

Marcello

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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I think he uses the new UI. I don't like it the either. [edit]it's not bad, there are just some minor things that I like more how InnoSetup does them [/edit]

I checked InnoSetup + ISTool net install and it sucks. You have to manually download each file. It's not package based.

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Yup, it uses the modern UI.
NSIS does a better job then InnoSetup (its much easier). Ive tried both already.

Im feeling really hyper from all the easter chocolate. Maybe I should go run around a bit. ;D

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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Gnatinator: i can host netinstall crap if you want to do net install... which i think is a very good idea ;D

anyway, we can write our own installer for it :-D

Marcello
Member #1,860
January 2002
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lmao I misread. teh comment. any chance on fixing that quote tag, ml?

Marcello

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Quote:

Gnatinator: i can host netinstall crap if you want to do net install... which i think is a very good idea

Very good... very good.. I will contact you about that when I get a system going. :D

Yeah, I found NSIS script to be much more powerful.

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

I was going to add FMOD for sound.

Might I suggest you also include DUMB?

Quote:

And one of our GUI packages for GUI

IMHO, ADime would be nice there too.

I'd have other suggestions, nut I can understand you don't want to bloat the package, so I leave it at this.

Krzysztof Kluczek
Member #4,191
January 2004
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I wonder if installer could do some nice things like compiling examples during installation (in case it doesn't do it already, I haven't tried it yet). You'd have compiled examples and package wouldn't get bloated in this case. :)

Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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The problem is that the user may not have the mingw variables and path set. This makes things more difficult for the installer.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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Quote:

The problem is that the user may not have the mingw variables and path set. This makes things more difficult for the installer.

Just have it check if they are set and if so, use them as default variables; else, ask for them.

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Oscar Giner
Member #2,207
April 2002
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Yeah, but the user won't like you set the variables globally. So you'll need to automatically generate a .bat file that sets the variables and does the compilation. Not sure if that can be done with nullsoft installer. You can write an external program that generates and executes these bat files.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
avatar

I'll hazard a guess since I haven't use it extensively and say that you can. Shouldn't be too hard a task to accomplish at any rate.

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