Pyglet is a technology to write cross-platform OpenGL games and applications in Python. If you go to the pyglet site, you will find installers for Mac OS X and Windows. The current Mac version of the installer, 1.1.4, uses Carbon, which means it doesn’t work with 64-bit applications. Not working with 64-bit applications is a problem if you’re running Mac OS X 10.6 and later. Version 1.2 uses Cocoa and works with 64-bit applications, but an installer is not currently available because 1.2 is still in development. Until an installer for 1.2 becomes available, you will have to install pyglet from source code to use version 1.2.

Install Mercurial

The source code for pyglet is in a Mercurial repository. If you do not have Mercurial installed on your computer, you must install it to be able to install pyglet 1.2. Installers for Mac OS X and Windows are available at the Mercurial site.

Clone the Repository

Cloning the pyglet repository gives you a copy of the source code so you can install pyglet. Launch the Terminal application, navigate to where you want the source code to reside, and run the following command:

hg clone https://pyglet.googlecode.com/hg/ pyglet

There is a space before pyglet in the last part of the URL. You should see a pyglet folder after cloning the repository.

Install Pyglet

After cloning the repository, it’s time to install pyglet. In the Terminal application go to the pyglet folder and run the following command:

python setup.py install

Now pyglet should be installed and you can start coding.

Install AVbin

Installing pyglet alone has one limitation. It can play only uncompressed audio files. To play compressed audio files, such as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files, with pyglet, you must install the AVbin library, which is what pyglet uses to play compressed audio. There are multiple versions available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux on the AVbin download page. Those of you running Mac OS X 10.6 and later should download a version that supports 64-bit Intel.

After downloading AVbin, you must install it from the Terminal application. Navigate to the avbin folder (the latest name of the folder on Mac OS X is avbin-darwin-x86-64-v8) and enter the following command:

sudo bash install.sh

Running the installation script installs AVbin and lets you play compressed audio files with pyglet.

Tags: pyglet

Apple changed the format for project templates in Xcode 4. The format change means the Xcode templates that ship with the Mac version of SDL don’t work in Xcode 4. If you have both Xcode 3 and 4 installed on your Mac, you can create a project that uses SDL in Xcode 3 and open it in Xcode 4. But if you’re running Xcode 10.7 and don’t have Xcode 3 installed, you’re stuck with Xcode 4 and can’t use the SDL project templates. But you can use Xcode 4 to create SDL applications without too much hassle.

Create a Cocoa Application Project

When you create a project in Xcode, select the Cocoa Application project, as you can see in the following screenshot:

The Mac OS X version of SDL is written with Cocoa so a Cocoa application project is the closest template to the old SDL project templates. Click the Next button to move to the next step where you name the project.

Deselect the Create Document-Based Application, Use Core Data, and Use Automatic Reference Counting checkboxes. SDL games don’t use Core Data or Apple’s NSDocument class. Automatic Reference Counting is for Objective-C code, which most of you won’t use if you’re using SDL. If you want to unit test your game with OCUnit, select the Include Unit Tests checkbox. My Using Xcode to Unit Test SDL Games Written in C++ post has detailed information on using OCUnit to unit test C++ code.

Click the Next button to move on to the final step of creating a project. Pick a location to save the project and click the Create button. If you want to place your project in a local git repository, select the checkbox to create the repository.

Remove Unwanted Files from the Project

Apple’s Cocoa application project template contains files that are not needed for SDL games. You can remove the xib file and source code files from the project: any files ending in .xib, .m, and .h. In Xcode 4.2 you would delete the following files: main.m, MainMenu.xib, AppDelegate.h, and AppDelegate.m. Select a file and choose Edit > Delete to delete the file from the project. An alert opens. If you click the Delete button, Xcode deletes the file instead of moving it to the Trash. Clicking the Remove Reference button is the safer option. My Xcode 4: Removing Files from a Project post has additional information on removing files from a project.

Add the SDL Framework to the Project

Now it’s time to add the SDL framework to the project. Select the project file from the project navigator to open the project editor. Select your target from the left side of the project editor. Click the Summary button at the top of the editor to see a list of linked frameworks. Click the + button to add a framework. More information on adding frameworks is in my Xcode 4: Adding a Framework to Your Project post. Click the + button to add any additional frameworks, such as OpenGL, SDL_image, and SDL_mixer.

Add SDLMain to the Project

The Mac version of SDL uses two files, SDLMain.m and SDLMain.h, that contain glue code for running SDL code on Mac OS X. The SDL project templates include these files, but in Xcode 4 you must add them to your project. Choose File > Add Files to ProjectName to add the files. After adding the SDLMain files to the project, you can start coding.

Add Search Paths

When I tried to build a SDL project with Xcode 4, I got a build error saying that the file SDL.h was not found. The solution was to add the following search path to the Header Search Paths build setting:

/Library/Frameworks/SDL.framework/Headers

You may also need to add a search path to the Framework Search Paths build setting, but I didn’t need to add a path. You may also need to specify additional search paths if you use additional frameworks, such as SDL_image and SDL_mixer. My Xcode 4: Accessing Build Settings post has detailed information on accessing build settings in Xcode 4.

Copy the SDL Framework to Your Application Bundle

The SDL Xcode project templates copy the SDL framework to your application bundle. Copying the framework to the application bundle allows someone to play your SDL game without having SDL installed. If you want the SDL framework added to your application bundle, add a Copy Files build phase to your target and add the SDL framework to the build phase.

1. Select the project file from the project navigator to open the project editor.
2. Select the target from the left side of the project editor.
3. Click the Build Phases button at the top of the editor.
4. Click the Add Build Phase button at the bottom of the editor.
5. Choose Add Copy Files from the menu.
6. Drag the SDL framework from the project navigator to the table in the Copy Files build phase.
7. Choose Frameworks from the Destination menu.

If you have additional frameworks to copy to the application bundle, repeat Step 6 for those frameworks. Don’t copy Apple’s frameworks to the application bundle; every Mac has Apple’s frameworks installed. Only copy third-party frameworks, such as SDL_image and SDL_mixer.

Tags: xcode 4

For those of you who don’t know what it is, Redmine is a tool for managing software projects and tracking bugs and other issues. One of Redmine’s features is its integration with version control systems. Suppose you have a bug in your software. You fix the bug and commit the fix to the repository. You can associate the revision number of your code fix with the bug in Redmine so you know which revision fixed the bug. Redmine supports several version controls, but I’m focusing on git because git is the only one I tested.

Configuring a repository is not difficult in Redmine. Create a project, go to its Settings section, and click the Repository tab. But the instructions to configure the repository are misleading for local git repositories. They tell you to enter the path to the repository. If you enter the path to your local git repository, such as the following:

/path/to/repository

You will get a 404 error when you try to access the repository in Redmine. You must enter the path to the repository’s .git folder for Redmine to be able to access it.

/path/to/repository/.git

If you enter the wrong repository path, discover the 404 error, and go back to correct the error by adding .git to the path, you will notice that Redmine does not let you modify the repository path. You must delete the reference to the repository and recreate it.

Click the Delete button, which is in the bottom right corner of the screenshot, to delete the reference to the repository. After deleting the reference, choose a version control system from the SCM menu and reenter the path to the repository.

Tags: git, redmine

When you add a text view to your application using Interface Builder you get access to the text view’s default contextual menu. You can open the contextual menu in your application by right-clicking (or control-clicking) in the text view. This menu lets you do things like cut, copy, paste, and check the document for spelling errors. If you’ve read Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa programming book you know how to replace the default contextual menu, but you may want to use the default menu and add some menu items to it. If you’re writing an HTML editor, you may want to add a menu item to wrap HTML tags around selected text. This post shows you how to add a menu item to NSTextView’s contextual menu.

Accessing the Contextual Menu

The first step to adding an item to a text view’s contextual menu is to access the menu. You can access NSTextView’s default contextual menu using the menu: method.

IBOutlet NSTextView* textView;

NSMenu* textViewContextualMenu = [textView menu];

Adding a Menu Item to the Contextual Menu

After you get access to the contextual menu, call NSMenu’s addItemWithTitle: method to add a menu item to the contextual menu. You must supply three pieces of information: the name of the menu item, the action, and the keyboard equivalent for the menu item. The action is the method that gets called when the user chooses the menu item. The following example adds a Tags menu item to the contextual menu with no keyboard equivalent:

- (IBAction)createTag:(id)sender;

NSMenuItem* tagsMenuItem = [textViewContextualMenu addItemWithTitle:@"Tags" action:@selector(createTag:) keyEquivalent:@""];

If you want to place a menu item in a specific place in the contextual menu, call NSMenu’s insertItemWithTitle: method. This method works similarly to the addItemWithTitle: method, but there is an additional argument to specify: the index (location in the menu) where you want to insert the menu item.

Adding a Submenu

Sometimes you need to add a submenu to a menu item. In the example I’ve been using in this article, you may decide to add a menu of tags as a submenu of the Tags menu so the user can add a specific tag. Call the contextual menu’s setSubmenu: method to add a submenu. Supply the menu to add and the menu item where you’re adding the menu. The following example adds a menu of tags to the Tags menu item:

IBOutlet NSMenu* tagsMenu;

[textViewContextualMenu setSubmenu:tagsMenu forItem:tagsMenuItem];

The example assumes you created a menu in Interface Builder. Add a NSMenu object to the xib file, and add items to the NSMenu object. Creating a menu in Interface Builder is generally easier than creating a menu programmatically, but you can create the menu in your source code if you want. Refer to the NSMenu Class Reference, which is part of Apple’s documentation, to learn more about creating a menu in code. Searching for NSMenu in Xcode’s documentation window should be enough to find the class reference.