Win32-Release of Apool(GL)

Binary releases (.msi and .zip):

Microsoft Installer File:

When downloading the Microsoft Installer File (apool*.msi) you just have to start the .msi-File and go through the installation procedure. Afterwards a program group "apool" should have been created in your start menu. Just try one of the apool links... ;-)

Using the msi-file is the preferred way to install ApoolGL!

ZIP File:

After downloading and extracting the zip-file a directory apool(GL)-xxx-yyy should have been created (depending on the file you've downloaded).

Since the dlls required by the programs are included, there's no need to install anything else.

You can start the apool.exe file directly!

Compiling the source

That will be bit more complicated than the stuff before ;-)

I will describe only how to compile apool/GL using gcc. It shouldn't be too complicated to create apool with the Visual Stuff from Redmond. Only SDL and SDL_gfx respectively have to be installed properly.

First you have to install a Windows gcc release and SDL (and if you would like to build the Not-OpenGL-release, also SDL_gfx). Look at the previous page for the internet-address of the SDL-stuff.

There are two possibilities to get gcc for Win32, CygWIN and MinGW. The first one seems to be more comfortable but everytime you would like to publish cygwin compiled program you've to include the relatively large cygwin1.dll. The zipped apoolGL-binary-package was two times larger using CygWin compared to the size of the file using MinGW!

Therefore MinGW seems to be the better choice for me.

To install the CygWin-Environment under Win32, just go to the CygWin-Homepage and download the installer. When you start the installer you will be asked for the packages you would like to install. Select gcc and OpenGL-develop. An Editor could help, too ;-)

For MinGW you have to download MinGW-XYZabc.exe from the MinGW-Homepage. Furthermore MSYS-XYZ-i386.exe, which is like Cygwin a Unix-Environment, is needed. You can also use Cygwin as Unix-Environment for MinGW but you have to be careful since you can run into trouble if you do not declare the paths correctly!

For the SDL-installation, download the SDL-Win32-sources from the SDL-Homepage. Follow the instructions to install SDL correctly. For MinGW do also download the SDL-XYZ-mingw-file.
(I had some problems doing the SDL-installation in both cases...)
If you would like to build apool (not apoolGL since SDL_gfx is not needed to build the OpenGL-version), you have to install SDL_gfx before compiling the apool-source. When you've downloaded SDL_gfx and SDL is installed correctly, just enter the "famous three commands": configure && make && make install. Afterwards it shouldn't be a great deal to compile the 2D release of apool.

Maybe the paths in the Makefile have to be changed to fit your needs. Especially the SDLCFLAGS and SDLLIBS must be changed. If SDL is installed properly try to run sdl-config --libs and sdl-config --cflags to obtain the correct entries. This can for instance look like:
SDLCFLAGS=-ID:/MinGW/include/SDL -Dmain=SDL_main -D_REENTRANT SDLLIBS=-LD:/MinGW/lib -lmingw32 -lSDLmain -lopengl32 -lSDL -lglu32
assuming MinGW is installed in D:\MinGW.

For the OpenGL-release some more changes have to be done to the Makefile since the OpenGL-libraries have different names under Linux and Windows. The Win32-libraries are named libopengl32.a and libglu32.a That is you've to put GLLIBS=-lopengl32 -lglu32 into the Makefile instead of the stuff written there.

If the runtime-error "XXX.dll is missing..." where XXX is either SDL* or cygwin1 (if you're using CygWin ;-) occurs, you've to copy SDL(_gfx).dll or cygwin1.dll respectively to your current directory or the Windows "System"-directory. If you would like to publish programs compiled with SDL you've to include the SDL.dll in the package! The same happens to cygwin.dll.