I have a visualbasic application that interacts with several versions of software (Catia)
The Visual basic code is common to all versions of Catia software but it only works if the dlls of the correct version are referenced.
Is it possible to reference the dlls of all Catia software versions in the app (they have the same name) and to use the correct dlls after having detected the software version.
I understand that you have a compiled .exe referencing the catia-api.
I encountered the same problems with our applications.
Two solutions that worked for me:
compile separate .exes for each catia release you require. Means:
have one catia release running, then compile. Repeat with next release.
The -regserver should be done by Catia when starting (which I am not 100% sure about, you might still need to do the -regserver as C R Johnson explained).
Use LateBinding which means do not reference any catia-dll/tlb at all. Instead use reflection to call api-methods. This is a lot more effort when developing your app, because you cannot use IntelliSense. (As a workaround you could develop with EarlyBinding in only one Catia release. When finished, change your code to LateBinding getting rid of all catia-api-references.)
I don't think there is any simple way to work around this.
If you have multiple versions you just have to run CNEXT -regserver (as admin) in the BIN folder of the version you want before CATIA is started.
Even this may not prevent problems, as libraries which change or disappear between versions and settings may not be compatible.
What are the differences between the different Rebol 3 branches, especially with the new REN branch?
Is it the platforms they'll run on, the feature set, code organization, the C standard compliance?
This is an answer destined to become outdated, hence set to Community Wiki. This information is as of Sep-2015. So if updating this answer after some time has passed, please modify the date as well.
Binary download of Rebol3 from rebol.com
Last build was 5-Mar-2011 and pre-dates the open source release.
No GUI support, no HTTPS support, no serial port support, no UDP support, no smart console...
No 64-bit builds. Binaries are for Windows x86, OS/X (PPC or x86), Linux (x86 or PPC), FreeBSD x86.
While Rebol2 binaries are archived for many "esoteric" systems (BeOS, AIX, Windows DEC Alpha, QNX, Solaris...) similar binaries were not provided for Rebol3. The only "weird" build is for Amiga, and only an OS4 PowerPC Amiga. No successful builds of Rebol3 for Amiga emulators have been reported.
Open source release of Rebol3 on Github rebol/rebol
Open-sourcing was on 12-Dec-2012.
The rebol.com binary downloads were not rebuilt as part of this release. However, a community member (#earl here on SO) created a build farm at rebolsource.net that follows this GitHub master whenever it updates. Given that GitHub's rebol/rebol master hasn't been updated since March 2014, this dynamism is currently underused.
Building the source at time of release got an executable not distinguishable (?) in functionality from the builds on 5-Mar-2011. This suggests few changes to the source were made besides some cleanup and Apache-licensing edits to prepare for publication.
Minor patches and bugfixes were integrated sporadically, with most PRs sitting idle. Last PR accepted at time of writing was Mar 3, 2014, which is over a year ago.
The most noticeable "breaking" PR that did get approved was to repurpose the FUNCTION name. It was considered to be worth breaking the old arity 3 form to let the word be taken for the much more useful implementation as locals-gathering FUNCT. (This also brought Rebol in alignment with Red, whose FUNCTION is arity 2 and acts similarly.) FUNCT was kept around as-is for legacy code.
The most major non-breaking PR that was taken is probably not requiring blocks around IF, UNLESS, or EITHER bodies. This has been received well among those who know it's there, as fitting the freeform and non-boilerplate philosophy of the language. It allows some code constructs to get "prettier" and gives programmers more choice, while it doesn't seem to cause any more problems than anything else. It's certainly less of a speedbump than if [condition] [...], in fact it seems almost no one knows this feature got added, so it must not be biting anyone. (If anyone can bend ears over at Red to make sure it gets IF and IF/ONLY then that would be ideal.)
RETURN/REDO was removed. Rationale was that it permitted functions to effectively behave with variable arity, and that this was unnecessary and took terra firma away by no longer being able to predict a function's arity from its spec. Perhaps this stance warrants a second look...as Lisp users who are pressuring for the addition of Lisp-style macros seeming aren't worried about that very much. (Here in the StackExchange universe, this provoked a Programmers.SE question Would Rebol (or Red) benefit from Lisp-style Macros?, which hasn't gotten much in the way of answers yet.)
The fork by Saphirion: "Saphir"
Prior to the open-sourcing of Rebol, Saphirion AG had a special relationship with Rebol technologies. They had access to the source and were taking responsibility for most of the development work for Rebol3 GUI features. They also added several other things like HTTPS.
Saphir is available as a binary download from their website, but only provided for 32-bit Windows. There was at one time an experimental .APK for Android from Saphirion.
Some (but not all) of Saphir's source was released after the open-sourcing. Notable omissions were the android build and some Rebol3 code for encapping...a way of injecting compressed scripts and resources into binaries of the interpreter without needing to recompile it.
(Note: Under Apache2 license there is no requirement to release source code for one's derived work.)
"Community" Integration at Rebolsource on GitHub
With the GitHub rebol/rebol being held up on integrations, a fork at rebolsource/r3 was established to be a "community build" where work could be staged.
Rebolsource changes were conservative, seemingly aimed toward showing process for how GitHub's rebol/rebol might adopt changes "in the spirit in which Rebol was conceived" should that repository be delegated to the community. (For that spirit, see this.) Hence it integrated non-controversial bugfixes and tweaks, instead of large third-party cryptography libraries for implementing HTTPS. Also: no allowance for adding build dependencies besides a C compiler (no GNU autotools, for instance).
Binaries for the community build were produced on an as-needed basis for those requesting them who could not build it themselves.
Atronix Engineering's Rebol "3.0" at Github zsx/r3
Atronix is an industrial automation solutions provider that uses Rebol. How they do so is described in a video here by David den Haring, director of Engineering, and their ZOE software is built on their version of Rebol.
After the open sourcing, Atronix partnered with Saphirion to port the GUI to Linux. Atronix publishes their source publicly as it is developed, and David den Haring notes in the video above that they have only one proprietary component they developed (an industrial control driver). Other than that they are happy to share the source for all Rebol development they do.
Atronix integrated the 64-bit patches from Rebolsource, created a Windows 64-bit target, and offer up-to-date binaries of their development branch for Windows and Linux x86/x64, as well as Linux ARMv7.
Besides having the features of Saphir, the Atronix build added support for CALL with /INPUT, /OUTPUT, /ERROR. It also added a Foreign Function Interface, implementing LIBRARY!, ROUTINE! and STRUCT! for communicating with non-Rebol dynamic libraries. It brings in encapping support as well on Windows and Linux.
Rebol's "religion" was at times at odds with expedience, so the Rebol-based build process was replaced when needed by hand-edited makefiles and Visual Studio projects. The FFI library introduced a dependency on GNU autotools to build.
All Atronix builds include the GUI, so there is no "Core" build. And again, only Linux and Windows.
Ren-C
(Bias Note: This fork is the initiative #HostileFork started, knows the most about, and will speak most enthusiastically about.)
Ren-C started as an an extraction of a Core build out of Atronix's codebase. That gave it features like HTTPS, the enhanced CALL, and Foreign Function Interface to essentially all the platforms that Rebolsource was able to build for. Updates Jul/Sep-2015 Ren/C supports line continuations in the console, user infix functions, several bugfixes...
Ren-C makes large-scale changes and fixes fundamental issues in R3-Alpha, which are tracked on a Trello that provides more information. There is a new FAQ as a GitHub wiki. Critical issues like definitionally-scoped returns have been solved, with continuous work on other outstanding problems.
Though Atronix's R3/View required some additional dependencies, Ren/C pushed back to being able to be built with nothing besides a C compiler, and eliminated all handmade makefiles/projects.
Beyond Windows, Linux and Mac in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants, Ren/C has also been built for smaller players like HaikuOS and yes, even Syllable. This is interesting more for the demonstration of how broadly turnkey builds of the C89 code work (simply as make -f makefile.boot) as opposed to there being a particularly large userbase of those particular OSes!
From the point of view of language rigor, Ren/C is pushing on modern techniques. Although it can still build as C89, it can be built as C99 and C11 as well. It has also been verified to build as C++98 through C++14, and with some strategic modifications under #ifdef __cplusplus it can take advantage of modern C++ as a kind of static analysis tool over the C code. Warnings are raised, type errors all fixed up, and it's "const correct". The necessary changes were carefully considered to make Rebol's baseline C code not just more correct but cleaner and clearer source across the board.
From a point of view of C developers, Ren/C should be stable, organized, and commented enough for anyone who knows C to "modify with confidence" and try new features. That means being able to implement definitionally scoped returns (actually written, but not pushed), or try developing features like NewPath.
From a point of view of architecture, Ren/C is intended to not have an executable at all...but to be a library for embedding a Rebol interpreter into other programs. It is now the basis for Ren/C++, which was designed to anticipate working with Red as well.
From a point of view of testing, Ren/C intends to whip everything into shape for engineering rigor and zero bug tolerance. This means avoiding practices like zero-filling memory to obscure uninitialized memory accesses, using Address Sanitizer, Valgrind, and a test suite that can pass the highest settings on both.
While enabling all the extra functionality has made Ren/C's executable nearly twice the size of Rebolsource's, there's not yet been any audit to see how this can be brought down. It has been confirmed that there are duplicate copies of Zlib and PNG encoding/decoding--for instance (Saphirion included LodePNG, likely to work around a bug in the existing PNG because it was easier than fixing it...yet did not mothball the previous code). Also, being able to do a build which selectively integrates only the codecs you want to use is on the agenda.
Ren/C currently has the stakeholders from Atronix and Rebolsource participating in its development and direction, which strengthens the likelihood that it may evolve into "the" Rebol Core. It is now being linked in as the code backing Ren Garden, and using a similar approach it may be set up as the library used by Atronix's R3/View...then Rebolsource...and perhaps ultimately rebol/rebol itself.
The fork by Oldes
(Bias Note: this edit is added 28-Feb-2019 by Oldes himself)
Forked from the community branch. Main focus on keeping the code close to the original Carl's release without blindly taking everything from Atronix/Saphirion but still trying to pick-up the good things from these branches slowly.
Not like Ren-C, this version is not trying to introduce new syntax, but rather be closer to the original Rebol2 and new Red language
I'm currently trying to compile an old program (made with C++ builder 2 or 3) with the "current" Embarcadero RAD Studio XE2.
So, I was wondering whether there is an easy way to use the old code, as Borland once claimed to be fully compatible to lower versions... however I couldn't find a "project-file", only source-code (.cpp, .h, .res, etc.).
I tried to "add to project" the main .cpp, however there seem to be some wrong include-paths... it also seem to use the OWL-package and includes its important source-files...
I'm a bit confused which type of main project I have to open first, since you need to open a new project before adding the source to it. As the running .exe has a GUI, I tried a Form-Window first, but it may be better to use a console or service as the real form is produced within the code as far as I understand.
So, after installing OWL and correcting the include-paths, do you think it should be running fine? Or is there something else to take care of?
If your old project was using OWL, you're probably well outside of the supported upgrade path.
That being said, valid C++ code should still compile and work and I've heard of people using OWL with recent versions of C++Builder. (via OWLNext)
Regarding your confusion as to which type of project to use, I believe a console application would be your best bet. A forms application is completely wrong, that will bring in the VCL and give you no end of problems trying to reconcile the different windowing systems. A service application is a completely different beast as well, and isn't meant for GUI applications. A console application should work, but you'll need more. The OWLNext project has a wiki that should help quite a bit.
I am going through a major crisis here and i would like to ask for advices.
I have been developing a game the last couple of months which is entirely based on lua scripting. The project is a cocos2d based project with the inclusion of the mclua library (more about mcLua can be found here http://www.grzmobile.com/blog/2009/12/1/integrating-lua-into-and-iphone-app-part-2.html).
Now i am nearly at the end of the implementation of the project and i just found out that apparently the version of lua that i use which is 5.1.4 does not have a goto statement which is of great importance to this project. The latest version of lua 5.2 however supports now goto statements.
My problem is that when i tried to add the lua version 5.2 to my project the library mclua throws a bunch of errors and it seems that this library doesn’t work with any other version of lua other than 5.1.4.
What can i do about this now? I was supposed to be nearly at completion of the project. Does this mean i am completely screwed now ?
Then you have a choice to make. You may:
Stop doing whatever makse goto "of great importance to this project". I've used Lua for a while and I've never needed goto that badly. Whatever you're doing can be done in some other way.
Modify this "mclua" library to fix the "bunch of errors" you get when you try to link it against Lua 5.2. Since you didn't explain what these errors are, we can't really help you in solving them.
Note that Lua's minor version numbers are not intended to guarantee backwards compatibile with prior versions. While the changes are generally relatively small, that doesn't mean that effort was extended to make code work in both without modification.
I want to update/upgrade the standard Leopard install of Sqlite3 to >3.5 to use the new sqlite_xxx_v2 methods from a Cocoa project.
I can't seem to find any information on how to do this. Does anyone have any tips or a site that outlines the update procedure.
Also is 3.5+ supported on the iPhone. I understand it's embedded so shouldn't be an issue...
What you want to do is grab the amalgamation sources from http://sqlite.org/download.html . Then just compile that into / add it to your project. You don't want to replace the system sqlite- that'll have unintended consequences in other applications. Plus, I'm pretty sure the system sqlite isn't a stock sqlite... Apple has probably made their own modifications to it that core data relies on.
You can read up on the amalgamation stuff here: http://sqlite.org/amalgamation.html , but in short: '''The amalgamation is a single C code file, named "sqlite3.c", that contains all C code for the core SQLite library and the FTS3 and RTREE extensions'''
I'd also suggest not using the sqlite calls directly, they weren't designed to be used that way (says the author of sqlite). Instead, there are a number of cocoa wrappers out there, including fmdb: http://code.google.com/p/flycode/source/browse/trunk/fmdb/ (which I wrote) :)
-gus
You don't really want to upgrade the system version of SQLite on Mac OS X. The reason is that all Mac OS X software is qualified against the versions of the packages that it includes, as built by Apple's build process. Installing a different version of a package, or even building the same version yourself but doing so slightly differently than Apple does, may result in a system that behaves unexpectedly.
Finally, if you embed a newer version of SQLite — or any Open Source library or framework included with Mac OS X — into your own application, you should be sure to integrate the Darwin changes for it from Apple's public source site. That way you can be sure you'll get as close to the same behavior as possible from the library you've built yourself as the version Apple ships, which is especially important when it comes to functionality like file locking in databases.
I don't believe i've updated my version, but it's currently at 3.4.2, and i'm able to use the new methods with the current version.
And i'm running 10.5.5 with the latest (public) iPhone SDK.
It would likely be easier to just drop the library into your project and link it in from there.