     ______   ___    ___
    /\  _  \ /\_ \  /\_ \
    \ \ \L\ \\//\ \ \//\ \      __     __   _ __   ___ 
     \ \  __ \ \ \ \  \ \ \   /'__`\ /'_ `\/\`'__\/ __`\
      \ \ \/\ \ \_\ \_ \_\ \_/\  __//\ \L\ \ \ \//\ \L\ \
       \ \_\ \_\/\____\/\____\ \____\ \____ \ \_\\ \____/
        \/_/\/_/\/____/\/____/\/____/\/___L\ \/_/ \/___/
                                       /\____/
                                       \_/__/


                 BeOS-specific information.

         See readme.txt for a more general overview.

BeOS notes

Status: It compiles for Intel R4 & R5. Port is complete.

Required software

BeOS Intel R4 and R5 Pro Edition come with everything you need. If you have BeOS Intel R5 Personal Edition, you require the development tools; these can be found on the Be homepage at http://www.be.com. You also need updated binutils, which can be found at http://bebits.com. It might not be a bad idea to update gcc as well, but is not required.

Installing Allegro

Allegro comes as a source distribuition: you'll have to compile it to get it to work. Unzip the library archive wherever you want, and cd into that directory with a Terminal. Due to the multi-platform nature of Allegro, you need to run:

      fix.sh beos

This will set the library ready to be compiled on the Be platform. Now you must build it:

      make

And then install it:

      make install

With this last command the Allegro library will be installed into /boot/home/config/lib (the default location for BeOS shared libraries), while the headers will go into /boot/develop/headers (the default locations where Be looks for them).

You have now installed Allegro! See the rest of the documentation and examples to learn more about it. A simple example of a command line to compile an allegro program:

      gcc foo.c -O2 -Wall -o foo `allegro-config --shared`

The `allegro-config --shared` is explained in the next section.

The dynamically linked version of Allegro gets built by default but if you want to build the statically linked version of Allegro write the following on the command line:

      export STATICLINK=1

In the same manner we can also enter one of the following lines to build either the debug or the profiling version of the library:

      export DEBUGMODE=1
      export PROFILEMODE=1

Then we can start to actually make and install the Allegro library.

      make
      make install

If you have compiled a static version of the library, it will be copied to /boot/develop/lib/x86.

Using Allegro

Linking Allegro to a program also requires you to link several other BeOS libraries and set the correct library search pathes. To simplify the linking process, the installation sets up a script, allegro-config, that will print out a suitable commandline. You can use this inside backtick command substitution, for example:

      gcc myfile.c -o myprogram `allegro-config --static`

This will enable you to link against the static library.

The `allegro-config --shared` option mentioned above will output all the options and libraries needed to link dynamically against the shared version of the Allegro library. If you use --libs instead of --shared or --static, the script will generate the linking arguments according to the latest installed library version. You can also run these allegro-config commands on the commandline to see what exactly they do.

If you want to build a debug version of your program, assuming that you have installed the debug version of Allegro, use:

      gcc myfile.c -o myprogram `allegro-config --libs debug`

Terminal newbies, take note that these are ` backticks, not normal ' quotes!

There are also other switches for printing out the Allegro version number, or to override the install paths. Run allegro-config without any arguments for a full list of options.

Don't forget that you need to use the END_OF_MAIN() macro right after your main() function!