openFrameworks projectGenerator Frontend

This project is a frontend for creating and updating openFrameworks projects. It provides an easy-to-use interface for the command line-based utility which does the actual work of generating project files for a variety of platforms.

While the command line utility provides a number of advanced features such as using local addons specific to a project or project templates for using a specific OpenGL version, this frontend aims to expose the most frequently used features used by a majority of users. Over time it will grow to add more of these advanced features. For more info on these features, see the commandLine folder.

This project is built with Electron, which provides a node.js backend and windowed Chromium context for building cross platform apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Setup

While you do not need the openFrameworks project cloned from GitHub in order to work on the electron app itself, it is probably helpful. You will need it in order to build the command line utility. Otherwise, you can copy an existing projectGenerator binary into this project folder.

Clone the projectGenerator repository

If you are working with openFrameworks from GitHub, you probably already have this repo cloned as a submodule. If not, or if you're unsure, run:

cd path/to/openFrameworks
git submodule update --init

This will produce no output if the repo is already set up as a submodule, or clone it otherwise.

Build the commandLine project

Build an updated projectGenerator binary from the project in openFrameworks/apps/projectGenerator/commandLine. After this, you should have a projectGenerator binary inside the commandLine/bin/ folder

Copy command line utility binary to frontend

cd openFrameworks/apps/projectGenerator
cp commandLine/bin/projectGenerator frontend/app

Install node.js

If you don't already have it, you can install node via a number of means:

• Directly from the node.js website
• Using a package manager for your platform
  • brew install node
  • apt-get install nodejs
  • etc.
• Using a node version manager like nvm
  • Install nvm for your platform, then:
  • nvm install latest

Install frontend dependencies

Install the depencies for the electron app:

cd openFrameworks/apps/projectGenerator/frontend
npm install

Updating

It's always good to update npm before generating the PG.

npm update

Debugging

You can open settings.json to enable some hidden settings, useful for debugging.
Moreover, Electron uses Webkit so all the Webkit developper tools are available to you. ( Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + i from the Electron window.)

• Console messages from index.js show up in the terminal (where you did npm start).
• Console messages from app.js show up in the Webkit console.

Run

Development

Run a development build with:

npm start

Release

To build & package the app for OS X, Linux, and Windows, using electron-packager:

npm run build

To build a platform-specific package:

npm run build:macos
npm run build:linux32
npm run build:linux64
npm run build:vs

This will created a packaged app for that platform(s) specified inside the dist folder.

License

MIT (http://openframeworks.cc)