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Building & using U++ without TheIDE [message #11360]

Sun, 09 September 2007 22:03

sergei
Messages: 94
Registered: September 2007

Member

Hi! I wasn't sure where this belongs, so I posted here.

I was looking for a good cross-platform GUI instead of MFC/WTL/Win32API. Found many alternatives (wxWidgets, Qt, FOX, FLTK, VCF), but U++ seems to be closest to what I want - opensource, relatively light, but with enough features, and using C++ style (not macros).

The thing is, I just couldn't build the library. I'm a newcomer to opensource, but still I managed to build and use wxWidgets, FOX, FLTK (no success with VCF though). Using the default setup, programs work within TheIDE, but I want to work with Code::Blocks + MinGW, or maybe MSVC.

Might be a bit offtopic, but I'll say what was the first experience. While I've read people turn U++ down due to the way the code looks, I'll say that's the reason I want to use it. I like pointers (used them in 2D graphics, and implementation of data structures), but these simply don't belong to interface design - it should be nice, clean class code. Just the way it is in U++. Other toolkits just have lots of pointers to stuff an news/deletes everywhere.

But TheIDE and the layout designer are quite a disappointment (sorry, but that's my opinion). Build system is interesting, but the interface itself seems very unmature. Same goes for layout designer (especially inserting controls through right click, and not having splitter there). Although I might just be spoiled (VB / VB.Net have excellent IDEs and designers). I'd suggest nicer icons, a treeview to show packages and files, and a toolbox for widgets (all of them if possible).

So, I would like to use only the library part of U++, not TheIDE and layout designer. I tried to just include it, the way I did with WTL, but it didn't work - U++ has CPP files (WTL consists of several H files). I've read in another thread that the code cannot work as a DLL the way it is, so I tried to build a static library. That didn't work too - lots of warnings, and some errors. Started with some weird error about String's << operator (which I managed to fix), it continued with ambigous names (GetLocaleInfoA/W is name of Win32 API and of String's functions), and then it couldn't find classes definitions/declarations. That led me to finding that some CPPs (like Locale in Core) didn't have H files, and the classes they implemented were in H's of different names. I'm not sure just how legal is that from C++'s point of view, but I have no idea how to compile that.

Could anyone help me with building a static/dynamic U++ library without using TheIDE? I would really like to use U++ due to its potential, but there isn't much sense gaining cross-platformness at the cost of losing IDE/compiler freedom. If a static library / DLL would be available for download, I guess people would be more comfortable at trying U++ out with the IDE/compiler they're used to (IMHO most difficult part of using open-source projects is getting them to start working). Installing U++ isn't difficult, but TheIDE is very confusing at first.

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