docs/base/readme.txt

   1                                 wxBase README
   2                                 =============
   3
   4 NB: this file applies to wxBase library only. If you are using a GUI version
   5     of wxWidgets, please refer to the documentation in the appropriate
   6     subdirectory (msw, gtk, motif &c).
   7
   8
   9  Welcome to wxBase!
  10
  11 0. Introduction
  12 ---------------
  13
  14  wxBase is the library providing most of the non-GUI classes of the wxWidgets
  15 cross-platform C++ framework. wxBase has some generic classes such as yet
  16 another C++ string class, typesafe dynamic arrays, hashes and lists and, more
  17 excitingly, wxDateTime -- a very flexible and powerful class for manipulating
  18 the dates in the range of 580 million years with up to millisecond precision.
  19 Another useful class not present in the standard C++ library is wxRegEx which
  20 allows you to use regular expressions for string matching and replacing.
  21
  22  There are also classes for writing portable programs in C++ painlessly which
  23 encapsulate things like files (and their names), directories, processes,
  24 threads, sockets and much more. Some of the other utility classes allow you to
  25 parse the command line, limit the number of instances of your program
  26 executing simultaneously (portably!) and so on.
  27
  28
  29 1. Requirements and supported platforms
  30 --------------------------------------
  31
  32  wxBase can be compiled and used under Win32, mostly any modern Unix system
  33 (including Mac OS X), VMS and BeOS (this release couldn't be tested under
  34 these platforms so you might encounter some problems but they should be easy
  35 to solve -- please contact us in this case!)
  36
  37  It is written without using any modern C++ features (such as templates,
  38 exceptions, namespaces) for maximal portability and so you shouldn't have
  39 problems compiling it with any C++ compiler at all. However, we only provide
  40 the project files for Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 and make files for Borland C++
  41 for Win32 (any contributions are welcome!) -- but our Unix makefiles should
  42 work with any compiler.
  43
  44
  45 2. Installing under Win32
  46 -------------------------
  47
  48 Please note that wxBase can be compiled in different configurations under
  49 Win32: as a static or shared library, in debug or release mode and in ANSI
  50 or Unicode mode for a total of 8 possibilities.
  51
  52 a) Using Visual C++ 6.0
  53
  54    Simply open the build/msw/wx_base.dsp file in MSDEV and build it. When it is
  55 done you can also open samples/console/console.dsp project and build it as
  56 well.
  57
  58 b) Cygwin
  59
  60    Please refer to the Unix section below.
  61
  62    Note that gcc's precompiled headers do not work on current versions of
  63    Cygwin. If your version of Cygwin is affected you will need to use the
  64    --disable-precomp-headers configure option.
  65
  66 c) Borland
  67
  68    Please refer to the docs/msw/install.txt. The console sample compiles and
  69    runs but does not pass all tests.
  70
  71 d) Watcom
  72
  73    The compilation has been tested only with OpenWatcom but should also work
  74    with Watcom 11.0 but probably not the earlier versions.
  75
  76    To build wxBase itself (only static library build is supported), enter the
  77    directory src\msw and type "wmake -f makebase.wat". See also Watcom notes in
  78    docs/msw/install.txt.
  79
  80    There is makefile.wat in samples\console which can be used to build the
  81    console sample with Watcom and also shows how can you write your own
  82    makefiles for wxBase and Watcom compiler.
  83
  84 e) Other compilers
  85
  86    Unfortunately we don't have the makefiles for any other compilers yet.
  87 Please contact us if you would like to help us with creating one for the
  88 compiler you use.
  89
  90
  91 3. Installing under Unix/BeOS
  92 -----------------------------
  93
  94 NB: If you're building wxBase from the wxWidgets distribution and not from a
  95     separate wxBase one you will need to add "--disable-gui" to configure
  96     arguments below!
  97
  98 Please note that GNU make may be required to build wxBase, please use it if
  99 you get any errors from the native Unix make.
 100
 101 The recommended way to build wxBase is:
 102
 103         % cd ..../wxWidgets
 104         % mkdir base-release # or any other directory of your liking
 105         % cd base-release
 106         % ../configure
 107         # ignore the error messages about missing samples
 108         % make
 109         % make install
 110
 111 You can also do:
 112
 113         % mkdir base-debug
 114         % cd base-debug
 115         % ../configure --enable-debug
 116         % make
 117
 118 To build the sample then cd to samples/console and make there.
 119
 120
 121 4. Documentation and support
 122 ----------------------------
 123
 124  The console sample provided with this distribution tests most (but not all)
 125 wxBase classes. It doesn't do anything useful per itself but you may want to
 126 look at its code to see examples of usage of the class you are interested in.
 127
 128  There is no separate documentation for wxBase, please refer to wxWidgets
 129 documentation instead.
 130
 131  Support for wxBase is available from the same places as for wxWidgets itself,
 132 namely:
 133
 134 * Usenet newsgroup comp.soft-sys.wxwindows
 135
 136 * Mailing lists: see http://lists.wxwindows.org/ for more information
 137
 138 * WWW page: http://www.wxwidgets.org/
 139
 140
 141  Hope you will find wxBase useful!
 142
 143                                                                  Vadim Zeitlin