mcStandaloneBuilder b1 posted

[Wilhelm Sanke]

Many thanks to Richard and Ken for the release of the new Standalone 
Builder and the 4.1 IDE, not to forget the new Metacard Setup 2.01 by 
Jacqueline - and I assume that the preparations by Klaus were helpful 
for the developments of these tools..

The releases coincided with a palpable improvement of my health after 
four months of fighting with a nasty gastritis that caused a lot of 
enforced inactivity and reduced my energy and productivity to a large 
extent. But last week I have even resumed training with my tennis team, 
hopefully to prepare for the second half of the summer series in August 
(usually it is colder here than elsewhere).

Although the new releases are actually not the direct cause of my 
relatively improved health (as you would also guess from my first report 
below), I think that working with the shortly following versions of 
Standalone Bulder and the IDE will help me to recover completely in the 
near future with an enhanced motivation.

In his release mail Richard wrote:

"In the meantime, feel free to post any bug reports you have either here 
to or me personally at b... at fourthworld.com

I wouldn't want to overload this list with bug reports, but it may be 
helpful to discuss them here where we can all keep apprised of what's 
working, what's not, and future directions. Your call."

With his "beta 1"-version Richard has given a differentiated answer to a 
situation that has become at least slightly more complex than before 
with the required new directory structure for a Metacard folder and the 
new license-binding procedures for a standalone two years ago. Before 
Rev version 4.0, all I needed to set up a Metacard folder was to drop a 
new Revolution engine into the MC IDE and possibly rename the engine, at 
least on Windows. To build a standalone, in the Metacard Standalone 
Builder I had to find a single file "standalone" (without extension) 
instead of the former "MC.exe" - and to prepare for such standalone 
building I had copied this single "standalone" file into my Metacard 
folder before. I just checked this again inside my Metacard folder 3.5 
gm1 with the MC IDE 3.0..

Here are some results and added comments of my first unsystematic 
exploration of the B1 version:

I succeeded to build two standalones from my stacks on Windows XP and in 
my Metacard folder 4.6.1, but after the succesful build they refuse to 
run and only throw an error message "Standalone origin mismatch". After 
these two non-running builds I was somehow unable to build more 
standalones. There is for example no indication in the Windows pane 
which fields are required ones and which optional. One of the questions 
here: Should not field "Original Filename" in the Windows tab be 
automatically filled from the chosen "Source Stack" selection?

For "LiveCode Folder/Bundle" - in the upper region of the Standalone 
Builder - I had first chosen the Livecode "runtime" folder" where the 
"standalone" files reside - following in essence the procedure I had 
used before in the 3.0 MC IDE, namely locating the necessary file 
"standalone".  Instead we apparently need to choose the complete 
Livecode folder, but I cannot replicate this now as the Standalone 
Builder at the moment refuses to build any stacks, there is even no 
error message when I press button "Build".

My proposal is to allow to point to the "runtime" folder only, which 
could be copied into the Metacard folder. This would mean that you need 
not have both the full Metacard and Livecode installations on the same 
computer (for example on a laptop). If the presence of a complete 
Livecode folder would be needed, why should we use an extra MC 
Standalone Builder?, provided of course the Livecode SB would function 
as expected without such peculiarities as it had often shown in the past 
like endless build times etc..

I see that "cRevStandaloneSettings" are attached to the source stack 
during the build procedure. Looking at them in one of the source stacks 
that were built, but refuse to run,
I find (without the full path before):
          "Meta-Livecode 4.6.1" for "_GEN_DestinationFolder"
          "Livecode 4.6.1"         for "_GEN_EngineFolder"
but     "Livecode 4.6"           for "defaultBuildFolder"

i.e. "4.6" instead of "4.6.1". Should this be the cause for the above 
quoted error message "Standalone origin mismatch"?

This is all I can report at the moment. I will continue to look more 
closely into the matter, but it seems to me we need a first update.

Best regards,

Wilhelm Sanke