I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.

I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.

I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).

I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.

Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

Chris Miller wrote:
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> 
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> 
> I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> 
> I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> 
> Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

Do you think it's Vista-specific?

--bb

== Quote from Chris Miller (lordSaurontheGreat@gmail.com)'s article
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
>
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.

I assume you've been sticking with DMD 1.x since I don't think that Tango or Derelict (or even DDBI?) are available for DMD 2.x. (And the last time I checked the latest DSSS wasn't compatible with the latest DMD 2.x.)


> I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.

I guess some people use Eclipse with the Descent plug-in, but I think most people just use a simple text editor that's setup to highlight D keywords.

I hope you get it figured out, but without more detail about what your problems are, I don't know what more advice to give.

By the way, I use batch files for compiling and I've found that I pretty much need the bin directories for both DMD and DSSS in the path to get DSSS to work. I don't know if that's because I'm "doing it wrong" or what, but I can get it to work that way. But I don't use Tango or Derelict or DDBI, so I don't know how those complicate things.

"Chris Miller" <lordSaurontheGreat@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fpdrpn$2nqe$1@digitalmars.com...
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
>
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
>
> I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find. I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
>
> I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
>
> Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

To install Derelict, I've always followed the instruction here:

http://dmedia.dprogramming.com/?n=Tutorials.SdlGlTutorial1

Which are linked to from the Derelict project page, but inexplicably not actually _on_ the Derelict project page.  They've always worked perfectly (the Windows install instructions).

DSSS shouldn't be _that_ hard.  It's basically

1) Unzip the DSSS zip to somewhere.
2) Add that path\bin to your PATH.

Tango's probably going to be the trickiest part.  I've got it installed but TBH I'm not entirely sure how X(

Chris Miller wrote:
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> 
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> 
> I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> 
> I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> 
> Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

For Tango, there's http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/wiki/WindowsInstall

The downloads page linked from there is http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/wiki/DmdDownloads#MSWindows which all include DMD.

Chris Miller wrote:
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> 
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> 
> I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> 
> I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> 
> Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

I have previously written two installation guides

D, DSSS, Tango and Derelict - http://www.gravitygame.se/denvironment.rhtml

D, DSSS, Tango and DWT - http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt/wiki/Installation

Jacob Carlborg Wrote:

> Chris Miller wrote:
> > I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> > 
> > I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> > 
> > I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> > 
> > I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> > 
> > Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!
> 
> I have previously written two installation guides
> 
> D, DSSS, Tango and Derelict - http://www.gravitygame.se/denvironment.rhtml

That's exactly the kind of tutorial I've been looking for!

Unfortunately I'm not at my workstation (using my Ubuntu Linux laptop ATM) so I'll have to take another whack at this when I get home.

> D, DSSS, Tango and DWT - http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt/wiki/Installation

That's not so bad...  coming from a guy who spent about three months messing with C++ and Boost (never did work, but it wasn't my fault either!).

I was trained in Java, so I Java-like GUI toolkit will help me greatly!


I'm sort of amazed that there isn't a downloadable image that has all of these things by default.  To me it would seem second nature to release toolkit images containing the basic libraries for GUI, OpenGL, std (Tango), etc.

Once you get this stuff installed it's not that weird, a simple file tree would look something like :d\;:d\dm;:\d\dmd;:d\dsss which the user could unzip to anywhere and have an instant toolchain right there.  Just add the stuff to the PATH and you're good to go.

Chris Miller wrote:
> I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> 
> I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> 
> I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> 
> I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> 
> Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!

Here's what I do.

1) Install DMD and DMC from the .zip (DMC unzip first) as per instructions on the web.

2) Install latest stable tango release from the .zip on their page, overwrite necessary files. Tango is now installed.

3) Set up DSSS by unzipping in D:\dsss

4) Learn how to add dsss.exe, dmd.exe, dmc.exe to your PATH

5) Learn how to create dsss .conf files

6) Install ddbg, add to PATH http://ddbg.mainia.de/doc.html

7) Use 'cmd' prompt, type 'dsss build' to build your software. For an editor, I like DScite.

8) You should be good to go.

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:41:56 -0500, Chris Miller wrote:

> Jacob Carlborg Wrote:
> 
>> Chris Miller wrote:
>> > I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
>> > 
>> > I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI. I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
>> > 
>> > I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
>> > 
>> > I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
>> > 
>> > Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!
>> 
>> I have previously written two installation guides
>> 
>> D, DSSS, Tango and Derelict - http://www.gravitygame.se/denvironment.rhtml
> 
> That's exactly the kind of tutorial I've been looking for!
> 
> Unfortunately I'm not at my workstation (using my Ubuntu Linux laptop ATM) so I'll have to take another whack at this when I get home.
> 
>> D, DSSS, Tango and DWT - http://www.dsource.org/projects/dwt/wiki/Installation
> 
> That's not so bad...  coming from a guy who spent about three months messing with C++ and Boost (never did work, but it wasn't my fault either!).
> 
> I was trained in Java, so I Java-like GUI toolkit will help me greatly!
> 
> 
> I'm sort of amazed that there isn't a downloadable image that has all of these things by default.  To me it would seem second nature to release toolkit images containing the basic libraries for GUI, OpenGL, std (Tango), etc.
> 
> Once you get this stuff installed it's not that weird, a simple file tree would look something like :d\;:d\dm;:\d\dmd;:d\dsss which the user could unzip to anywhere and have an instant toolchain right there.  Just add the stuff to the PATH and you're good to go.

Digitalmars is the only ones (except Tangos special privileges) to distribute dmd. This has caused limited ability for community driven packages. And yes this has come up in discussions before.

Chris Miller Wrote:

> Jacob Carlborg Wrote:
> 
> > Chris Miller wrote:
> > > I've been having some major issues for a long while now trying to install D.  Much of it is because of my library choices, but I don't have a choice as to what libraries I need.
> > > 
> > > I've been working to try and get a working installation of D on my Windows Vista workstation.  Whether it's DMD or GDC I don't really care.  My biggest problem is that I need Tango, Derelect, and DDBI.  I've totally given up on finding an IDE by now.
> > > 
> > > I've been following the instructions online to the letter (the ones on digitalmars.com) and they keep throwing me grief.  The DInstaller project hasn't been good, since it installs everything to somewhere I can't find.  I got DSSS working once, which was nice...  but then when I tried to build a helloworld.d file it didn't work (tried using rebuild, which is what I would be building larger projects with).
> > > 
> > > I can provide further documentation of what I've tried if you like, though it's really just me hitting wall after wall after wall.
> > > 
> > > Thanks for your time, and thanks in advance for any pointers or help you can give!
> > 
> > I have previously written two installation guides
> > 
> > D, DSSS, Tango and Derelict - http://www.gravitygame.se/denvironment.rhtml
> 
> That's exactly the kind of tutorial I've been looking for!
> 
> Unfortunately I'm not at my workstation (using my Ubuntu Linux laptop ATM) so I'll have to take another whack at this when I get home.

I attempted to install this stuff to a flash drive while at school.  It didn't work on the derelict install.  I thought it was related to the weird nature of the school machines, but when the error happened again at home... I knew something was wrong.  During dsss net install derelict this happens:

.. lots of stuff we don't care about ...
Exported revision 282.
Creating imports for DerelictUtil

derelict => DerelictUtil
+ C:\dsss\bin\rebuild.exe -Idsss_imports\ -I. -S.\ -IC:\dsss\include\d -SC:\dsss
\lib\  -IC:\dsss\include\d -SC:\dsss\lib  -oqdsss_objs\D  -explicit -lib derelic
t\util\exception.d derelict\util\loader.d derelict\util\wintypes.d derelict\util
\wrapper.d -ofDerelictUtil.lib
derelict\util\wrapper.d(71): Error: undefined identifier fromStringz
derelict\util\wrapper.d(71): Error: function expected before (), not fromStringz
 of type int
derelict\util\wrapper.d(71): Error: cannot implicitly convert expression (fromSt
ringz(cstr)) of type int to char[]
Command C:\dsss\bin\rebuild.exe returned with code 1, aborting.
Error: Command failed, aborting.

It seems to be choking on the compile, screaming something about the source it's trying to compile in its final moments.

I have a few hypotheses:

1) Derelict isn't Tango-compatible.  Move back to Phobos, compile Derelict, move back to Tango.
2) The sources dsss downloaded don't compile anyways.  Manually check out a previous revision, or wait for someone to fix it.


I tried both repositories DSSS gave the the choice of downloading from.  Both gave the same results.  The Tango example compiled and ran okay though, so I know it isn't an issue with a broken compiler or something like that.

Attached are the directory trees of the relevant directories.


Thanks for the help, I've already gotten further than I previously would be able to much faster than I would have been able to get on my own.

My goal is to have this stuff working by the Ides of March so I can begin the real fun work of coding (which is why I'm a programmer - mucking around with installing stuff is for IT gremlins!)