the
mac-mdl cook book
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Some contributions and tips on how to port Microstation MDL applications to the Macintosh and other minority platforms
This started as a idea about how to remedy the relative scarcity of current and updated MDL apps for Microstation 95 and -SE on the Mac, compared to what's available on Wintel. Not being a programmer myself, I thought a cook-book variant for porting already finished and working source code for other platforms would be a help for do-it-youself novices, you know the explicit variant that says
1. turn on the stove,
2. pour two cups of water for every cup of rice...etc.Now, it turns out I get more advanced and qualified contributions than I thought was possible. This is very fine - I just hope no one gets scared away!
Well, all contributions are welcome. Send them to snuttar@arkitur.se. This is what I've got so far:
From
mike.mccreavy@bentley.com - some tips on how to port MDLs
and how to avoid common issues
Hi Thomas,
If everyone followed the "rules," set forth in the MDL Programmer's Reference Guide, compiling an MDL application would be the same for all platforms. Unfortunately, not everyone does this. :( Developers always manage to find platform specific idiosyncracies and exploit them (knowingly or not). So, keeping in mind that "complete and correct" instructions is an impossible goal when it comes to porting, I can give you a bunch of pointers to handle common errors:Pointer #0:
- Get your MPW environment set up properly, define the correct Bentley environment variables, and make sure you can build a 'proper' Bentley example.For instance, if you should be able to build $(MS)/mdl/examples/trumpet/trumpet.mke before trying to build an mdl application that may have platform incompatibilities. The MPW shell available on Select Stream includes an MPW Startup Script that will instruct you on which environment variables to set.
Pointer #1:
- Remove any platform specific paths in the MDL's makefile.These tend to look like:
baseDir = c:/mdlapps/myapp/or a relative path using the dos and unix ".." (parent directory) convention like:
sourceDir = $(baseDir)/source/
includeDir = $(sourceDir)/../include/The best solution to these makefile path problems is to redefine the "root" macro using a platform (and location) independent mechanism, and then redefine the problematic macros in terms of this root directory.
BMAKE has the builtin macro "_MakeFilePath" to help you set this root directory.
Bentley makefiles use this macro to define a root directory for an MDL application's source:baseDir = $(_MakeFilePath)and then define any other macros in terms of that macro:
sourceDir = $(baseDir)source/
includeDir = $(baseDir)include/that way, there are no hardcoded paths to an absolute location. Also, there are no platform specific paths in your makefile.
Pointer #2:
- Remove any platform specific paths in the MDL's source.Occasionally there will be include statements along the lines of:
#include "..\include\structs.h"in a source file. This should be changed to:
#include "structs.h"and the compiler should be instructed to add the "include" directory to its file search path.
You need to add this instruction to your makefile before the dependency line for the source file. For native C, you can use a special .mki file for adding a directory to the C compiler's search path:dirToSearch = $(baseDir)include%include cincapnd.mki
where "cincapnd.mki" stands for "C Include Append". For MDL, you can add the like this to the makefile before the dependency line for your object file:
altIncs + -i$(baseDir)includeso, when the .MC.MO rule executes (from mdl.mki):
.(mc,m,c).mo:$(msg)
> $(o)make.opt
-c
-o$@
-i${publishInc}
-i${publishIdsInc}
-i${stdlibInc}%if defined (privateInc)
-i${privateInc}%endif
-i${genSrc}
$(platformOpts)
$(altIncs) <--- altIncs macro
$(compOpts)
$(moreMdlCompileOpts)
$<
<
$(MCompCmd) @$(o)make.opt
~timethe "-i$(baseDir)" is added into the make.opt file for mcomp.
Pointer #3:
- Remove platform/compiler specific arguments added to the command line that cause errors on your platform.When a makefile adds an argument to the C compiler that isn't recognized by your C compiler, you'll have to change those.
Instead of having a line like:
cdefs + /DDEBUGwhich may only work for the Microsoft C compiler, use the Bentley supplied .mki file to add predefines to the C compiler in a platform independent manner:
nameToDefine=DEBUG
%include cdefapnd.mkiwhere "cdefapnd.mki" stands for "C Define Append".
If you would be interested in collecting questions or know of other common problems, I will attempt to answer them (time and knowledge permitting, of course!). If you want to make a faqomatic, that'd be cool.
good luck, mike.mccreavy@bentley.com
01-03-99th