Chapter 1 - Build and Install

This chapter describes the steps necessary to build and install the VirtualT application for Linux, Windows and MacOS platforms.

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Building VirtualT

VirtualT is a freeware, open source software project that is provided under the terms of the BSD License (see Appendix C). As an open source project, the program is provided in source code format and can be built and/or modified by the user.

To successfully build the application for a given Linux system or MacOSX, perform the following steps:

  1. Download the FLTK distribution from the FLTK website. VirtualT version 1.0 was tested using FLTK release 1.1.7.
  2. Unpack / unzip the FLTK distribution and 'cd' to that directory.
  3. Run the FLTK configure script ("./configure"). This will configure the build environment for FLTK based on your environment and available tools and libraries.
  4. Build the FLTK libraries by typing "make" while in the FLTK directory.
  5. On some distributions, the JPEG, PNG and ZLIB libraries are not built when building the FLTK libraries. These libraries are provided in the FLTK distribution. To build them manually, 'cd' into each of the FLTK subdirectories below and type "make".

    • jpeg
    • png
    • zlib

  6. Set the FLTKDIR environment variable. The VirtualT GNUMakefile relies on an environment variable to specify the location of the active FLTK library. This environment variable must be set to the root directory of the FLTK distribution to be linked with VirtualT, such as:

    FLTKDIR=/users/myname/fltk-1.1.7

  7. Check the directory structure for the VirtualT source. The root build directory should have the following files and subdirectories:

    • GNUMakefile - The makefile for the Linux make utility
    • src - Subdirectory of all VirtualT source files
    • doc - Subdirecotry with all help files and images
    • ROMs - Subdirectory with ROM images
    • vt_client_src - Subdirectory for the vt_client socket application for Windows builds
  8. Build VirtualT by changing to the root VirtualT directory and typing "make".

For Windows users, a binary distribution is provided, but if you wish to perform your own builds of intermediate version of VirtualT, the following process should be followed:

  1. Download the FLTK distribution from the FLTK website.
  2. Unzip the FLTK source to a directory.
  3. Open the FLTK Project file using Visual Studio. The Visual Studio projet file is located in the visualc subdirectory of the FLTK distribution.
  4. Select Release or Debug build.
  5. Build the FLTK libraries.
  6. From within Visual Studio, select and build each of the image libraries:

    • jpeg
    • png
    • zlib

  7. Set the FLTKDIR environment variable. For Windows XP / 2000, this environment variable is set by Right-Clicking on "My Computer" and selecting "Preferences". Browse to the "Advanced" tab and click "Environment Variables". Add the FLTKDIR variable as a new User variable.
  8. Open the VirtualT Project file using Visual Studio.
  9. Select Release or Debug build.
  10. Perform the Build. This should build both the VirtualT application and the vt_client app. If not, manually select the vt_client project and set it as the "Current" or "Startup" project, then perform the build.

    NOTE: With VirtualT 1.0, the Visual Studio 6 project files have not been updated to include
    the new files.  Instead, Visual Studio 2005 Solution and Project files (.sln, .vcproj) have been
    provided.  The main reason for the migration is temporary lack of access to Visual Studio 6
    environment.  A Visual Studio 6 project file will be provided later.

Installing VirtualT

VirtualT uses a very specific directory structure to allow emulation of multiple laptop models while keeping program data separated (RAM storage files, ROM files, etc.). Version 1.0 and later releases will automatically create the necessary directory structure using ROM image files located in the ROMs subdirectory. This directory will be created the first time VirtualT is launched. Below is the directory structure that will be created:

   main_virtualt_dir
       |
       |----virtualt  (application)
       |----M10       (Emulation directory)
       |----M100      (Emulation directory)
       |----M102      (Emulation directory)
       |----PC8201    (Emulation directory)
       |----T200      (Emulation directory)

Launching and Using VirtualT

For the most part, VirtualT is a GUI driven application with all features configurable from within the GUI. The only exception to this is the socket interface used for remote control and debugging. To enable the socket interface, VirtualT must be invoked with a command-line option to specify the socket port as follows:

This will cause VirtualT to launch a socket listener thread for remote control appliations as described in Chapter 5. To connect to the socket interface using the vt_client application, from a command prompt perform the following:

  1. 'cd' to the VirtualT directory
  2. type './vt_client port_number'

The vt_client application will connect to the socket interface of VirtualT and present a command-line interface for control.