mINgw/gcc

Windows
1

Hey Jules apologies if this question has come up before and kudos from a longtime tracktion user.

I may be out of line in my estimation of codeblocks, since it appears to be a fairly mature product, but within 3 minutes of installation, I found several objectional things about the GUI and the juce build failed miserably.

My question is this…gnu make is pretty simple really IMO and I have a perfectly working MinGW/MSys installation. Is there a plain ol’ makefile for a windows build?

Thx in advance.

2

No, haven’t got a makefile, but you could probably get Visual Studio to create one. Though I’d really just recommend using MSVC.

3

Again Jules, apologies in advance, but I’m one of those people.

I never use ms software on both principal and taste, but I will admit MSVC (and some other developer tools) are the few MS apps I have heard very good things about.

For now I am enjoying getting familiar with the gcc suite, particularly because developing with common tools across Windows and Linux is important to me.

I may have found some help on that makefile btw. Thanks for the quick reply.

4

that sort of attitude has always both baffled and annoyed me [this is not a personal thing, no offence is intended]

  • if someone feels so strongly against microsoft that they’re willing to let their petty attitude get in the way of their operational comfort, what the hell are they doing operating on and developing for a microsoft platform? surely the ‘principles’ should force them to shun those who are victim/slave to the evils of the corporaion. and if there IS a reason to cater for those weak users of the platform (for they are the majority), then - as the developer must use the platform anyway, surely they are utter fools to not take the opportunity to use what is frankly one of the best dev environments on any platform…
    especially when (A) it’s free and (b) it literally just works! (especially with juce - and nothing else is needed)

again, not at you specifically, just a response to the frequently replenished state of agog caused by the stubborn.

5

Haydxn

hmmmmmm…ok, I was pretty careful with my wording in to avoid a flame, and I do understand your POV. As I said in my post (A) I admit I have heard good things about MS Dev tools and (B) I am specifically wanting to use open tools for portability reasons.

Now, for your enrichment I would point out that

Statistically I would say that there is less than one person in 100 who would not take offense at such an exclamation, particularly when followed by terms like [quote]petty attitude[/quote]

However, I am delighted to announce that I can see through your complete lack of finesse to your real point, which is to favor pragmatism over politics in one’s choice of tools. Fair enough.

I have used MSVC, Borland C++, Delphi, VB and for the most part it’s all a wash to me. Depends on the task at hand. From my limited POV, favorites often seem to spawn from situations like this, where you are trying to tap into an existing codebase.

And I admit, the hassle of resolving deep and complex dependencies is a strong force to pull one toward the codebase writers tool of choice, no doubt about it.

But I honestly don’t see what’s so hard for people about a makefile

Having said that, I would pass this question up to Jules - what exactly is it about MSVC that’s so much better in your opinion?

there’s software out there that is smart. That takes a new tack on a real problem, puts a new spin on it and presents an intuitive and elegant solution that is a pleasure to use. Tracktion is a superb example. Go to http://www.natalieweese.com to hear an entire CD (Make Believe) produced with Tracktion. Blender 3D, same thing.

I have never, ever experienced anything close to this enjoyment with any software from MS, including Windows itself. Tracktion, chucking Windows interface conventions, simply leapfrogged a sucky standard with a Better Idea.

Put it this way. Your computer tech is standing with you as you stare at a PC that appears to be locked up. You say, “What’s wrong?” He says, “It’s loading…” You say “Loading what?” He says “It has to load all the exciting stuff that makes it possible for you to have an exciting, rich user experience!” You say, “But that’s ruining my user experience. My experience is terrible” He’s just smiling, glassy eyed watching “stuff load”.

That sort of sums up what it’s like using Windows. But I admit, the alternative have issues of their own, so in many respects it remains the best available option.

6

I’m right with you in that regard - I would LOVE to have an IDE equivalent to Tracktion… now that would really be something special. Additionally, I have no interest in OS conventional interfaces either (these are all reasons why I have such love for Juce). I am totally on your side there- the computer is a modern interactive medium, and yet we are still stuck with primitive interface design. If there were more apps released with such focus on genuine usability, I’d be very happy. And so would everyone else - even though most people have no idea it’s even possible.

I’m sorry to have gone on a rant - I did try to point out that it wasn’t aimed at you, but it’s obviously unavoidable (and understandable) for you to take it as such. Everyone has their reasons, although ultimately unless there’s a compatibility/administrator rights/etc… reason, i’d match that “1 in 100” statistic to “people who wouldn’t consider that petty” :wink: [especially when it’s leveled against MS, which is kinda vogue]

From all the alternative IDEs I’ve tried, though there are ‘different’ interfaces, there are none that are significantly different to warrant a Tracktion style shift in philosophy. In fact, compared to VC++, they’re just worse [especially when it comes to just getting Juce to build!]. There’s different for better, and there’s different for the sake of different, and it’s all too common that people just end up in the latter camp without even bothering to see what they’re missing. Thus, it’s all too easy for one [i.e. me, tired and ratty] to point the finger.

I humbly apologise for my sharpened opinion. It’s good to see someone else with such a strong desire for advancements in user interface design.

[*] I had a bunch of ideas actually about building an IDE (using Juce, naturally) which kinda spun out from a documentation-building app. Thing is, I just know how much of a pain-in-the-arse it is to get anything to actually build on any of the open tools [and they’re written by people who are much better at it than me], I feel i’d have no chance! Maybe one day, when I know more… just thinking about trying to deal with stuff like compiler flags etc… I barely even know what half of them are, let alone how to hide them behind a nice intuitive interface!

7

Humble apology accepted!

I have to say, though, while I like Tracktion’s interface, I’m not at all sure sure the standard IDE interface isn’t already pretty close to right.

It’s a question of fitting the solution to the problem.

What makes Tracktion great is not the vector graphics (look & feel) or even the screen layout. The interface actually adheres to conventions in most respects, despite the fact that it looks different.

3 Key Benefits :

  1. simple left to right flow from input/control to generator to filters to output. It’s so simple anyone can get it, and sound crafting is really intuitive

  2. Single screen interface where clicking, say, a plugin revealed it’s interface on the lower part of the screen (ie the depreciation of overlapping and popup windows)

  3. Pretty darn robust handing of the audio subsystems, since it rarely locked up, etc.

But even Tracktion has issues. Dealing with midi was always clunky. If julian has chosen to put the midi editing in the lower screen instead of expanding the clips in the timeline it would have been much easier. So nobody’s perfect!

The bottom line for me is, what’s the tool supposed to do and does it naturally facilitate work and creativity or get in the way of it. Elegant designs (hardware or software) that fit the former description are painfully rare. So it’s more a mediocrity issue, not a microsoft issue.

Like any socialist economy, the lack of competition (ie a defacto monopoly) does tend to foster mediocrity (I suppose you trade freedom for equality, meaning we can all be miserable together!) If I were the judge deciding whether to break up that particular monopoly, I would not look at divesting the company’s divisions. Rather I would look at restricting them at the OEM level, so that the benefits of windows had to be effectively marketed to consumers based on real, provable benefits.

If the price of the PC were rebated $50 and the consumer had to choose OSX (assuming that were possible), Windows, or some flavor of Linux, I think the OS marketshare landscape change, or, Microsoft would remain dominant not through an oem stranglehold, but by simply creating superb software (of which MSVC is apparently an example).

On the audio front, It bugs me that in 1990 or so I got a lot of commercial music done with an ensoniq ASR10 which (while admittedly having some OS bugs) effectively did a lot of what any self respecting sampling + sequencing software does today, with what amounted to a CLI (ie no GUI) and roughly 1/2000 the cpu power. Similar story with the Synclavier. So that’s a problem I am looking at.

But getting back to the developer stuff, you mentioned compiler flags. I had the same attitude about make just a week ago. Then I simply sat down and read the pdf manual and discovered make is so simple it’s practically braindead - I don’t see the difference between pressing f5 on my ide to build vs flipping to MSys and typing “make”. All the hard work is in making sure the dependencies are included and built in the right order, but somebody (Jules in this case) has to do that whether you use an IDE or a text editor. The functionality is identical. Both ways you have a detailed console output that tells you what worked or went wrong.

So again, I ask, (Jules too) other than not having to do any prelim work to get JUCE to build, what is it specifically you like so much about MSVC? I’ll be happy to try it (it’s been about 5 years) if there are compelling reasons to do so.

best regards

Dave

8

well MSVC is an IDE and it’s mature. That’s enough for me. I’ve tried Eclipse, devcpp, codeblocks, and nothing really compares…

Building projects is one thing but working inside a single environnement, having intelligent code completion, debugging … is much more valuable to me.

If I hadn’t to write and debug my programs, only build them, I wouldn’t be using MSVC or Xcode or any IDE. I’d just use CMAKE or scons which are truly cross-platform build systems, not just a Makefile.

9

CMake will generate Makefile, msvc and xcode projects for you

You can find an up to date CMakeLists.txt here :
http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juceforum/viewtopic.php?p=14047#14047

10

[quote=“thomas”]CMake will generate Makefile, msvc and xcode projects for you

You can find an up to date CMakeLists.txt here :
http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juceforum/viewtopic.php?p=14047#14047[/quote]

personnaly I’d prefer an IDE using CMake or scons as a backend than the opposite.

scons can also generate msvc projects but I’m not totally satisfied with the result.

11

here’s what i use on Linux

can’t remember if i did a windows version? I’ll hae a looky the morra at werk.