@html_text_substitution=readme.txt|<a href="../readme.html">readme.txt</a>
@external-css=../allegro.css
@document_title=Allegro MSVC-specific information
@<pre>
     ______   ___    ___
    /\  _  \ /\_ \  /\_ \
    \ \ \L\ \\//\ \ \//\ \      __     __   _ __   ___ 
     \ \  __ \ \ \ \  \ \ \   /'__`\ /'_ `\/\`'__\/ __`\
      \ \ \/\ \ \_\ \_ \_\ \_/\  __//\ \L\ \ \ \//\ \L\ \
       \ \_\ \_\/\____\/\____\ \____\ \____ \ \_\\ \____/
	\/_/\/_/\/____/\/____/\/____/\/___L\ \/_/ \/___/
				       /\____/
				       \_/__/


		 MSVC-specific information.

	 See readme.txt for a more general overview.
@</pre>



@heading
MSVC notes

   Status: complete.

   The screensaver example is built, but you must copy <tt>scrsave.scr</tt> to
   your <tt>windows/system</tt> directory (or <tt>winnt/system32</tt> directory
   under Windows NT/2k/XP) if you want to test it.



@heading
Required software

   <ul><li>Microsoft Visual C++.
   <li>Recent set of DirectX and other Windows SDK headers.
   <li>A GNU environment to run GNU tools with, such as DJGPP, MinGW or Cygwin.
   Depending on which one you choose, you will need the following packages:
   
      <ul><li>DJGPP: compiler (<tt>djdev*.zip</tt>, <tt>gcc*b.zip</tt>, <tt>bnu*b.zip</tt>).<br>
	 GNU make (<tt>mak*b.zip</tt>).<br>
	 Optional: GNU sed (<tt>sed*b.zip</tt>). Used by "<tt>make depend</tt>" and
	 "<tt>fixdll.bat</tt>".<br>
	 Optional: GNU sort (<tt>txt*b.zip</tt>). Used by "<tt>fixdll.bat</tt>".<br><br>

      <li>MinGW: compiler (mingw-runtime, gcc, binutils).<br>
	 GNU make.<br>
	 Optional: GNU sed. Used by "<tt>make depend</tt>" and "<tt>fixdll.bat</tt>".<br>
	 Optional: GNU sort (textutils). Used by "<tt>fixdll.bat</tt>".<br>
	 Optional: w32api. See next section about details.<br><br>

      <li>Cygwin: compiler (cygwin, gcc, binutils).<br>
	 GNU make.<br>
	 Optional: GNU sed. Used by "<tt>make depend</tt>" and "<tt>fixdll.sh</tt>"<br>
	 Optional: GNU sort (textutils). Used by "<tt>fixdll.sh</tt>".<br><br>
   </ul></ul>
   Allegro should work ok with MSVC versions 4, 5, 6, 7.0 (.NET),
   7.1 (.NET 2003) and 8.0 (.NET 2005). However note that the lowest tested
   version is 6.

   The DirectX SDK can be obtained directly from Microsoft. An old version 
   of the headers is included with MSVC 6, but Allegro requires more recent 
   files. You should either copy the current headers into your MSVC include 
   and lib directories, or alter your <tt>INCLUDE</tt> and <tt>LIB</tt> environment variables
   to put the DirectX SDK files in front of the standard MSVC locations.

   If you choose to use DJGPP as your GNU environment, the DJGPP compiler and
   associated tools can be downloaded from your nearest SimTel mirror site,
   in the <tt>/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/</tt> directory, or you can use the zip picker
   on <link>http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/</a>. See the djgpp <tt>readme.1st</tt> file for
   informations about how to install DJGPP.

   If you choose MinGW, download the MinGW compiler and associated tools from
   '<link>http://www.mingw.org</a>' or '<link>http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/</a>'. You
   can download the complete distribution instead of the individual packages
   if you don't want to install each package manually.

   If you choose Cygwin, get <tt>setup.exe</tt> from '<link>http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/</a>'.
   Start the Cygwin setup program and download the required packages. Then
   install the packages (run <tt>setup.exe</tt> once more). When setup asks you which
   line endings you want, select unix-style instead of DOS.

   Remember that the chosen set of tools have to be on your PATH during the
   building of Allegro.



@heading
Installing Allegro

   This is a source-only distribution, so you will have to compile Allegro 
   before you can use it. To do this you should:

   Set up your environment so that MSVC can be used from the commandline.
   You probably have a <tt>vcvars32.bat</tt> file that will do this for you (usually
   located in the <tt>VC98\BIN</tt> folder where you have MSVC installed, for example
   <tt>C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\</tt>). Under either Windows NT or
   Windows 2000, you will have to run this file every time you open a DOS box
   or configure the environment variables in Control Panel/System/Environment.

   The make process needs all the path variables to be in DOS 8.3 format, and
   since MSVC is usually installed in something like
   "<tt>C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003</tt>",
   this will cause a problem. Run "<tt>echo %MSVCDir%</tt>" (<tt>%VCINSTALLDIR%</tt>
   under MSVC 8) from the command line to see if you have this problem. 
   If you are using MSVC 6 or lower the output should already be in DOS 8.3
   format so you should not have any troubles. With higher versions of MSVC
   it will probably show the long path with spaces. There are two solutions
   for this.

   If you have chosen MinGW and have installed it with the w32api package
   you can solve this problem simply by passing the <tt>--msvcpaths</tt>
   parameter to <tt>fix.bat</tt> (see below).

   Otherwise if you are using <tt>vcvars32.bat</tt>, you will have to
   edit it so that it sets the 8.3 paths, not the long versions.
   To get 8.3 path names, you can use the command prompt (<tt>cmd.exe</tt>).
   Type in "<tt>dir /x</tt>" to get a listing of the 8.3 file and directory
   names alongside of their full names. You can also use the DOS prompt
   (<tt>command.exe</tt>) and "<tt>dir</tt>", but this will only show
   you the 8.3 names.

   If you are using Cygwin as the GNU environment, start the Cygwin bash shell
   from the command prompt (if you used the command prompt to run <tt>vcvars32.bat</tt>
   then you must start Cygwin in the same command-prompt window you used to
   run <tt>vcvars32.bat</tt> unless you configured the environment variables in Control
   Panel/System/Environment). This is usually done via "<tt>C:\cygwin\cygwin.bat</tt>".

   Go to the directory where you have installed Allegro by using '<tt>cd</tt>'.

   If you are using Cygwin, type "<tt>./fix.sh msvc --utod</tt>". Otherwise (i.e if
   you are using DJGPP or MinGW), type "<tt>fix.bat msvc</tt>". If you are 
   using MinGW and want the <tt>fix.bat</tt> to solve problems with long paths,
   type "<tt>fix.bat msvc --msvcpaths</tt>".
   
   If you are using MSVC 7 you can specify "msvc7" instead of "msvc" to enable
   better optimizations. Likewise, you can specify "icl" to use the Intel
   commandline compiler. If you are using MSVC 8 you should specify "msvc8"
   otherwise you will get a lot of deprecation warnings. For MSVC 6 and older
   you can use also "msvc6".

   If you are compiling from CVS, before continuing you must run both
   "<tt>make depend</tt>" and "<tt>misc/fixdll.sh</tt>" as explained below, or the build will
   fail asking for some <tt>.inc</tt> file.

   Type "<tt>make</tt>". Then go do something interesting while everything compiles.
   When it finishes compiling, type "<tt>make install</tt>" to set the library up
   ready for use.

   If you also want to install a debugging version of the library (highly 
   recommended), now type "<tt>make install DEBUGMODE=1</tt>". Case is important, so
   it must be <tt>DEBUGMODE</tt>, not <tt>debugmode</tt>!

   If you also want to install a profiling version of the library, now type 
   "<tt>make install PROFILEMODE=1</tt>".

   If you want statically linked libraries as well as the default DLLs, pass
   additionally "<tt>STATICLINK=1</tt>" to the make commands above.

   If your copy of Allegro doesn't include the <tt>makefile.dep</tt> dependency files
   (unlikely, unless you have run "<tt>make veryclean</tt>" at some point or are
   building the CVS version), you can regenerate them by running
   "<tt>make depend</tt>".

   If your copy of Allegro doesn't include the linker .def file (unlikely, 
   unless you have run "<tt>make veryclean</tt>" at some point or are building the CVS
   version), you can regenerate it by running "<tt>misc\fixdll.bat</tt>". Cygwin users
   can run "<tt>misc/fixdll.sh</tt>" instead.

   Once the build is finished you can recover some disk space by running
   "<tt>make compress</tt>", which uses the UPX program to compress the executable
   files and the optimized dll. Before running "<tt>make compress</tt>", you must set
   the environment variable UPX_BIN to point to <tt>upx.exe</tt>. You will have to
   do run "<tt>make compress</tt>" before "<tt>make install</tt>" if you want the compressed
   dll to be copied to the windows directory. To recover even more disk
   space, you can run "<tt>make clean</tt>" to get rid of all the temporary files and
   HTML format documentation.



@heading
Using Allegro

   All the Allegro functions, variables, and data structures are defined in 
   <tt>allegro.h</tt>. You should include this in your programs, and link with one of
   the libraries:
<textblock>
      alleg.lib      - optimised DLL import library
      alld.lib       - debugging DLL import library
      allp.lib       - profiling DLL import library
      alleg_s.lib    - statically linked optimised library
      alld_s.lib     - statically linked debugging library
      allp_s.lib     - statically linked profiling library
<endblock>
   When using a statically linked library, you must define the preprocessor
   symbol <tt>ALLEGRO_STATICLINK</tt> before including any of the Allegro headers and
   link your program against Allegro and the main Win32/DirectX libraries
   in that order (see the variable <tt>LIBRARIES</tt> in <tt>makefile.vc</tt>). You have also
   to make sure that your program is linked against the right C run-time
   library, ie. the multi-threaded DLL version of MSVCRT (or the debug
   version if you are using the debug library). You can change this option
   at Project - Settings - C/C++ - Category: Code Generation - Use run-time
   library.

   Don't forget that you need to use the <code>END_OF_MAIN()</code> macro right after
   your <code>main()</code> function!

   If you use one of the DLL versions, you will obviously need to distribute 
   the appropriate DLL along with your program: these can be found in the 
   <tt>allegro/lib/msvc/</tt> directory.

