Hollywood APPBuilder released

[Allanon]

AppBuilder v3.1 released
Here is the project page where you can read all the details and where you can download the packages.
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AppBuilder is a tool that can drastically increase your Hollywood-MAL productivity, infact, with AppBuilder, you can compile and pack your cross-platform projects with a single click without bothering with long shell commands.



In a standard environment, if you want to target multiple platforms and you are making use of plugins, you would have to build your executables and manually you have to pack them including the right plugin for every targeted platform. This process is extremely boring but worst part is that it can lead to mistakes copying the wrong plugin for the targeted platform or putting it in the wrong folder.

If you often build your applications for multiple platforms this utility is a must have!



With a easy to use interface this app let you select for which platforms you want to build, let you set up your main source and what Hollywood plugins your application needs: AppBuilder will manage for you all the boring tasks like copying the correct plugin version in the correct target platform folder.

Additionally AppBuilder can manage for you your application resources, just tell AppBuilder which resources must be included with your application and it will copy all of them in the right folders, MacOS application boundles are also handled, MacOS .app bundles will be managed by AppBuilder with no efforts from the user.



AppBuilder can also manage external data: with external data I mean data that must be included with your distribution but that is not essential to run your application, and should be placed outside the main application folder.

Think about a “readme” file, or documentation files : setting these files as external, AppBuilder will copy them inside the build folder but outside the application folder, this is especially useful for MacOS applications because external files will be placed outside the application boundle and will be easily accessible by the final users.

One more thing that AppBuilder can do is to create for you a zipped archive ready to be distributed, it uses 7zip so you must have it on your system to use this feature or, at least, you should have a similar program that uses the same command line arguments of 7zip.

You can get a key for free if you are my patron or you can get it with a small donation (please read about it in the project's web page).



Change Log
- Started support for multi-language (but not yet available)
- Changed the layout to add an information line at the bottom of the window
- Overing the mouse on a button a brief explanation will be displayed on the bottom line
- Added a “Reset configuration” button in the “Configuration” window
- Configuration is now saved in JSON format, old format is still processed and converted to the new one
- Added switch : “Use build date in build folders”
- Added switch : “Open build folder after building the application”
- Added project switch : Enable/Disable “Console Mode”
- Added project switch : Enable/Disable “Lock Settings”
- All plugins has been updated to their latest available version, missing plugins has been added.
- Compilation targets has been updated
- Added support for Hollywood 10

[Bugala]

Also one more thing that Allanon might not be even aware of himself.

I don't recall for sure, but it probably had to do when you were using for example @BRUSH command, which means that you can make a single executable file that has all the graphics included in that same file. That instead of having executable for program and then separate files for graphics, music etc. you can have them all in a single .exe file, making it very easy to "install" the program, since all you need to do is put .exe anywhere you like and it already works, since everything needed is inside that .exe file.

However, when doing that way there is one problem that I noticed (supposing I recall right), for when there were lots of these @ commands, it started taking quite long time for the program to load when it was not in compiled form.

I would make a little change, like change the placing of a text a bit, and then click "run" to try out how it now looks like, and this started taking quite a long time due to all the @s in the program.

But there was a way to speed this up. And that was with the APPbuilder.

I noticed that APPBuilder compiles this kind of program very fast, and it became such that it was faster for me to keep the APPBuilder open on the background, and instead of using "Run"-option in my editor, I would instead click on save-button to save the latest changes, then click "Compile" on Appbuilder, and after that click the resulting exe, and this was much much faster way to test my program than using the "Run"-button.

So this is another benefit APPBuilder can give you, that if you use a lot of @s in your program, then testing becomes bit slow, but with Appbuilder you can get the testing speed up again.

[plouf]

i believe he knows @.. comamnds, but there a number of reason you want files to be loaded external.
like easy "rebranding", "theme abilities" etc

[Bugala]

i believe he knows @.. comamnds, but there a number of reason you want files to be loaded external.
like easy "rebranding", "theme abilities" etc

Im sure Allanon knows about the @-commands, but what I meant is that he might not be aware that using lots of them can slow down the "run"-command on editor, and using AppBuilder is a solution to get it done fast again.