~ Patching OWLNext Sources ~

Patching

Make a new directory for OWL Next. I used "c:\owl", but you can use anything you want. Substitute the directory name you have chosen wherever "c:\owl" is used in the rest of this guide.

Important: Avoid having any names on the path that would not be valid under DOS. That means limiting names to eight characters with no embedded spaces. The OWLInst program may not work if it is run from a folder containing spaces, like "C:\Program Files\OWL Next". If you receive the message "Error command script missing", then move the program to another folder, which path does not contain spaces or long file names.

The following steps are tricky, but you should have no problem if you follow these directions carefully. I've done this many times, and still I always go through this file step by step.

Step 1: Locate the files

Move all the zip files you downloaded to "c:\owl", but don't extract them yet. You can extract any of these zip files with just about any program that handles that format. I found that a 1994 version of "pkunzip" worked fine for everything as long as I told it to respect the pathnames that are stored in some of the download files.

Step 2: Extract additional headers

Important: Skip this step if you are using OWL Next with the Visual C++ .NET compiler.

Go to "c:\owl" and make the "c:\owl\include" subdirectory. Extract "add_fil.zip" into the subdirectory you just made. You want to place the three files ("commctrl.h", "htmlhelp.h", and "richedit.h") that this zip file contains in "c:\owl\include", so you'll have to override the path information that's saved in the zip file. You specifically do not want them to end up in the default "add_files" subdirectory that the zip file contains.

If you are using GNU tools, then extract "owl_lin.zip" and the zip files it contains. One of them is "gcc.zip" — you'll need that one — but the other one, "gnu_test.zip", contains examples that are optional. You could use the files contained in "gcc.zip" to overwrite the headers in your installation of "gcc", but I prefer to put them in their own directory and place that directory at the beginning of the include path. Here's what I do:

• create subdirectories "c:\owl\gcc", "c:\owl\gcc\win32api", and "c:\owl\gcc\win32api\include",
• then extract the files contained in "gcc.zip" to that last directory, placing it on the include path.

Step 3: Extract compatibility headers

If you are not using the compatibility headers ("compat.zip"), then you can skip this step.

But if you did decide to use the compatibility headers, then extract "compat.zip" into "c:\owl", making sure your extracting program respects the path information saved in the zip file. This will create the "c:\owl\compatibility" subdirectory. Move all the files in "c:\owl\compatibility\include\owl" to "c:\owl\include\owl", then move all the other remaining subdirectories of "c:\owl\compatibility\include" to become subdirectories of "c:\owl\include", and finally remove the "c:\owl\compatibility" directory.

If you are using BIDS, then make a subdirectory "c:\owl\lib" and extract the contents of "bids.zip" into that new directory.

Step 4: Patch to OWL Next 6.04

Extract "owl64x.zip" — x is the appropriate letter for your copy of OWL as described in the download section above — and "owlinst.zip" in "c:\owl", and run the extracted "owlinst" program.

Follow the patching procedure:

1. A file open dialog pops up with the caption "Select patch file". Select "owl64x.owl", the file you just extracted.
2. You see a "Welcome" message box that you can dismiss by clicking OK.
3. Next you see a dialog captioned "Browse for Folder" that prompts you to "Select Borland C++ 5.02 root directory", if you're using "owl642.owl" as I am. Other patch files mention a different Borland compiler, of course. This dialog lets you specify where your original, unmodified Borland source can be found. The directory you want to specify is the one that has "source" and "include" subdirectories. In a default hard-disk installation of Borland C++ 5.02, that would be "c:\bc5", for instance. Tip: It's a very good idea to put your Borland CD into the CD drive and use that, because you know it's complete and unmodified. Many OWL Next installation difficulties are solved by using the CD here instead of a directory on your hard disk.
4. Another "Browse for Folder" dialog appears, this time with the caption "Select directory for OWL". Use the "c:\owl" directory you created above.
5. The patch program should now perform the patching. First it displays "BinPatch Licence Information", then it goes through a couple of progress dialogs. Finally, it says "Patch complete".

If at any time you see a file open dialog that is not described above, that means the patch program couldn't find some file it needed. The caption of this dialog tells you the name of the file it couldn't find. If this happens, and you are using a hard disk installation as your Borland root directory, then switch to the Borland CD, which should not have this problem. You should not proceed to the other steps until the source has been successfully patched.

If you look very closely at the progress dialogs, you may see error messages. For instance, I saw the message "owl642.utp is not valid archive" flash by, almost too quickly to read it. You can safely ignore these error messages.

Step 5: Patch to the latest version

Now that you have successfully installed OWL Next 6.04, you need to apply another patch to upgrade it to the latest version. Extract the lates patch into "c:\owl", then run program you just extracted. For instance, for version 6.19, extract "owl604p19.exe" from "owl604p19.zip", then run "owl604p19.exe". The patch program will run and hopefully report success.

Step 6: Extract optional files

If you are using "owlext30.zip", extract its contents into "c:\owl", making sure your extracting program respects the path information saved in the zip file.

If you are using "owlhlp.zip", make a subdirectory "c:\owl\help" and extract the zip file there.

Last updated: April 2005