Unicon is a very high level programming language. It runs on many operating systems including most Linux distributions, Windows, macOS, and BSD systems. It also supports most modern CPU architectures such as i386, amd64, armhf, arm64, and ppc64el.
The latest sources are available from Unicon's git repositories on Sourceforge and GitHub. To get the sources from either repo do:
git clone https://github.com/uniconproject/unicon.git
or
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/unicon/unicon
On Windows systems it is advised to add the --config core.autocrlf=input option to the git command.
git is available on linux via the standard package managers, for example on a Debian system
sudo apt install git
On macOS git is available with xcode. On windows you can install and setup git using the instructions: here
For source tarballs and binary distributions, see unicon.org download page
Prerequisites
- Gnu/Unix utilities such as shell, make, grep, etc.
- C language compiler that supports C99 such as gcc or clang
The initial configuration is done via a standard GNU autoconf script, run:
./configure --help
For configuration options help. On Windows:
sh configure --help
The configuration script allows you to enable or disable features in the Unicon build at compile time.
Some of the features are turned on by default as long as the dependecies are satisfied. Those features
can be turned off by doing --disable-FEATURE, for example:
./configure --disable-graphics
disables all graphics support. On the other hand, some features are disabled by default. Those can
be turned on by doing --enable-FEATURE, for example, to enable operator overloading:
--configure --enable-ovld
One other aspect to consider is that the configure script is opportunistic when it comes to turning on features. Features that are enabled by default will be disabled automatically if they are missing dependencies. If you want to change the behavior to make the configure script stop with an error instead of skipping a feature when its dependencies are missing, just enable that feature explicitly. For example, if you want to enable https/ssl, do:
./configure --enable-ssl
If openssl development library is not present on the system, the configre script will stop with an error message:
configure: error: "ssl requires libssl-dev or equivalent"
Use the package manager in your Linux distribution to get a build utilities and C compiler. For example, on a Debian system
sudo apt install build-essential
Optionally, you can install development library dependencies to enable more Unicon features. Most of these libraries are listed below for common Linux distibutions.
Debian/Ubuntu:
apt install libgl1-mesa-glx libssl-dev libx11-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libglu1-mesa-dev
libxft-dev libopenal-dev libalut-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev unixodbc-dev
libfreetype6-dev
Fedora/Centos (Depending on your Centos version, you may need to replace dnf with yum):
dnf install libjpeg-turbo-devel libpng-devel libX11-devel mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel
freetype-devel openal-devel freealut-devel libogg-devel libvorbis-devel
openssl-devel unixODBC-devel libXft-devel
Go into the Unicon directory and run:
./configure
make
After that you can add unicon/bin to the $PATH environment variable or install Unicon instead:
make install
Install Xcode command line tools (or all of Xcode) from the macOS app store. After that the build steps are the same as those on Linux. To ensure using clang, explicitly set the compiler as follows:
./configure CC=clang CXX=clang++
If you want access to the graphics facilities of Unicon, you also need to download and install the XQuartz package from https://www.xquartz.org/.
There are two possibilities depending on the choice of the C runtime library. You can choose the legacy Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime (MSVCRT), which runs on all versions of Windows, or the newer Universal C Runtime (UCRT64), which is used by Visual Studio but is only available by default on Windows 10 and newer. Starting from version 13.3, binary distributions of Unicon for Windows will be built with UCRT64. See msys2 environemts for more details about available environemnts and their C Library options.
-
Download and run the installer from https://www.msys2.org/. At the time of writing it is called
msys2-x86_64-20230127.exebut it may be updated from that version. -
Go through the installation process to get a UCRT64 environment.
-
Using the UCRT64 shell, Install tools required for the build:
pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-diffutils git
- Install the optional libraries for a full build (Unicon will build without them but some features will be absent).
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openssl mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libpng mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo
- Clone the Unicon repository:
git clone --config core.autocrlf=input https://github.com/uniconproject/unicon
The option --config core.autocrlf=input avoids problems with different conventions
for the end of line character.
- Configure Unicon:
./configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32
The option x86_64-w64-mingw32 ensures the build is 64-bit. After the script finishes do:
make
Note that, although the build environment is UCRT64, the resulting Unicon binaries may also be
run from the standard Windows command line cmd terminal.
-
Download and run mingw-get-setup.exe
Go through the install process and use it to install only msys-base. This will give you an MSYS (not MSYS2) environment with all the needed Linux/gnu utils.
-
Get MinGW64 compiler suite, TDM package is known to work with Unicon. Most recent package is 9.2.0
Note that you maybe missing the tool "make". TDM MinGW comes with a "make" that is named mingw32-make.exe. That file can be found under the insallation directory of MinGW64 inside the bin directory. create a copy of that file and name it "make.exe" before continuing.
- Clone the Unicon repository (same steps as UCRT64 above).
After that you can use the standard Windows command line cmd terminal to build Unicon.
sh configure
or
make WUnicon64
Which is a shortcut for running:
sh configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32
The option x86_64-w64-mingw32 ensures the build is 64-bit. After the script finishes do:
make
Questions and comments to: jeffery@unicon.org