2009-05-21 - About the Allegro Manager concept application:

    Here is the deal... I've only worked on the application on the rare occasion that I had nothing else to do so there really is no functionality to the application.  It's still really in the concept stages and so it's just a bunch of source (although it's working source). Currently there is a lot of useless stuff in the code (besides being useless itself), but the whole idea was to have an application (that used Allegro) that you would download and install that would then do the following:
 It basically teaches noobs how the process works while doing most of the hard work for them.  And of course providing a quick update and build button for those who are just impatient.

So through the app you could do one click updates that would automatically rebuild and install the library as necessary. But wait there's more! The whole Allegro Manager would be self updating as well. When you run the application it checks for updates of itself and then runs through it's own update procedure of downloading and installing itself and even checks itself for corruption or viruses. NEAT HUH?  No more noobs asking "Wha do i doo 2 mak teh lib?" No it doesn't time travel or read your mind, but I also wanted to internationalize the app by allowing for translations to other languages and more. The way things have been going for me lately I may never have the time to finish anything Allegro though... :\

So below is a link to a zip containing the source. To build it I used Code::Blocks so all you should have to do is open the workspace file, change the default compiler for each project ('Build options' for each project/target) and then compile the projects in this order '_touch', 'av_crc', 'updater' and then 'al_manager' and all should be well, but no gaurantees. I know it's kind of complicated but that's the way I like it...

The build process uses my own _touch so it will work everywhere and uses a program in the workspace called 'av_crc' (usefull only in windows) to modify the 'al_manager.exe' and 'updater.exe' so they can check their own simplified crc. The idea here is that if the exe is corrupt or modified by a virus, it can detect it and notify the user that something is wrong. This doesn't gaurantee a virus free distro or upgrade path, but it helps keep it clean...  It has been tested with Code::Blocks on MinGW under Windows XP.  If you can't get it to compile, then well "I told you so." I haven't actually touched the code in many many months, but I did a complete rebuild before posting this and so I know it works... Well it works here at least.

Hopefully someone will learn from this or even become inspired to do something similar (or teach me a thing or two)... The code uses libcurl to access the internet and a modified version of agup for GUI (included in src folder)... and of course it uses a static build of Allegro 4.2.2. Aside from code written by somebody else you can do whatever you want with my code as long as you give me credit where its due... Enjoy... I have to get back to work...:\

almanager.zip
Thanks,
   ron dot novy at yahoo dot com