Installing BlitzMax from SVN

I wrote a little summary about installing the SVN version of BlitzMax on OS X from scratch. I hope somebody will find it useful:

http://www.wmaus.net/wordpress/20080810-installing-blitzmax-on-os-x-leopard-from-the-svn-repository/

Nice work. Stickied! ;-)

This is a nice tutorial, but it really is something that BRL should have professionally provided up front at the time of making this live.

Why? The SVN version is not an official release. Official releases you can download from the Products Updates section of your Account page.

The SVN version is not an official release.

Precisely.

However, expect the usual banter to follow about svn and updates and official-ness and why BRL are bad for letting everyone see their internal progress.

Indeed ;-)

But better to have access to in-progress work than have to wait months for full releases.

If you look around the wild web, this is how open-source projects work - you can wait between releases for updates, or dive in and try out the latest code from the repository.

Sure, BlitzMax isn't an open-source project, but I don't see any reasons why it can't act like one.

Anyhoo... enough of this banter.

I think if you're going to make the SVN stuff available you should consider it an aspect of your business's image and presentation, and therefore is `official`. You can't just say `oh here's a newer version on SVN` without really telling people what SVN is and how to use it. That's kind of like creating a new product and shipping it without instructions.

Still, the above tutorial looks good and I will try it out this weekend.

Another approach:

SVN BlitzMax on an Intel Mac.

This is a brief tutorial to get the BlitzMax SVN version up and running on an Intel Mac, installed in your Home directory, using only Terminal. You will need to have XCode installed (it's on your OSX install disk or you can download the latest version from http://developer.apple.com) and a valid Blitz username and password.

CHECKOUT
--------------

Initially you need to 'checkout' the BlitzMax SVN files. To do this, open a terminal window. Finder menu: Go->Utilities->Terminal.

Type the following commands (and enter your Blitz username and password when requested):

svn checkout http://blitzbasic.com:81/svn/blitzmax/dev/main ~/blitzmax
svn checkout http://blitzbasic.com:81/svn/blitzmax/dev/macos_x86/bin ~/blitzmax/bin
svn checkout http://blitzbasic.com:81/svn/blitzmax/dev/macos_x86/lib ~/blitzmax/lib

If you have a MaxGUI license:

svn checkout http://blitzbasic.com:81/svn/maxgui/dev/maxgui.mod ~/blitzmax/mod/maxgui.mod

Change into the BlitzMax binary 'directory':

cd ~/blitzmax/bin

Compile all source files:

./bmk makemods -a
./bmk makemods -a -h

Compile and build the MaxIDE (if you have a MaxGUI license):

./bmk makeapp -t gui -h -d ./../src/maxide/maxide.bmx

Move the MaxIDE executable to an appropriate directory:

mv ./../src/maxide/maxide.app ~/blitzmax

Close the Terminal window. Launch the MaxIDE. Finder menu: Go->Home->blitzmax->maxide. Rebuild documentation.

* NOTE *: If you don't own a MaxGUI license you need to download the latest MaxIDE ( http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=81570) and extract it into the root blitzmax directory.


UPDATE
----------

Periodically you may want to 'update' to the latest BlitzMax SVN development version. In a Terminal window type:

svn update ~/blitzmax
svn update ~/blitzmax/bin

If you have a MaxGUI license:

svn update ~/blitzmax/mod/maxgui.mod

If any files were updated, you need to rebuild the modified files:

bmk makemods
bmk makemods -h

Rebuild (and move) the MaxIDE if any MaxGUI files were rebuilt:

./bmk makeapp -t gui -h -d ./../src/maxide/maxide.bmx
mv ./../src/maxide/maxide.app ~/blitzmax