~ Prerequisites and Downloads ~

Prerequisites

OWL is copyrighted software owned by Borland, hence you need a lisense of one of their products that includes the OWL source code. OWL Next is distributed as patches to that source.

Full OWLNext 6.20 installation is available here:
http://cc.codegear.com/partners/cppbuilder2007/owlnext/owlnext/index.html

The source and header files only are available here:
http://cc.codegear.com/Item.aspx?id=24659 (free registration required)

Precompiled OWL Next libraries are available. They may be convenient if you have difficulty building the libraries yourself. But to use them, you still need to follow the instructions in this guide, in order to get the patched headers you need.

Downloads

Download either the full 6.20 installation or the source files from the above links.

To upgrade OWL Next to the latest release, you also need the latest patch — at the time of writing this there is none yet.

The next few sections describe other files that you might need as well.

Additional headers

Depending on your compiler, you may need any of the following files.

owl_lin.zip

is needed to build OWL Next with GNU tools, and provides replacements for some mingw headers. Important: Make sure you get the latest version of this file — if you have previously downloaded an older version, you need to replace it.

Build support files

You can build OWL Next with either GNU, Borland, or Microsoft tools. Their object file formats differ, so the file you choose should match the tools you plan to use to compile OWL Next.

obj32b.zip

for any Borland compiler.

obj32v.zip

for the GNU or Microsoft compiler. I believe you no longer need "obj32v.zip" for the GNU toolset, because the object files it contains are created automatically by "gas", the GNU assembler.

These archives contain pre-assembled code for several files that are written in assembly language. They contain routines that handle integers longer than 32 bits and perform some low-level graphics functions. If you want to use Borland tools and have installed their assembler, then you do not need these files because you can assemble them yourself.

Compatibility patches

If you plan to use OWL Next with OWL code that you have already written (or that others have written) using Borland OWL, then you should download one or both of the compatibility patches that this section discusses.

bids.zip

OWL Next replaces not just Borland OWL, but also portions of the Borland class library. It needs to do this because parts of the class library are tightly integrated with OWL. For instance, Borland OWL uses the obsolete container classes in the class library, but OWL Next uses its own replacements instead. If you have to maintain programs that use the old container classes, then download "bids.zip" to get new files that emulate the old container classes. You probably will prefer to use STL in new code you write.

compat.zip

Borland put its OWL and class library headers in separate directories. OWL Next puts all these headers in one directory instead. But old programs expect to find class library headers elsewhere. To allow old programs to work, OWL Next provides dummy headers that reside in a class library directory and simply include the appropriate OWL Next header. Download "compat.zip" to get these dummy headers. These headers are helpful for getting old code to work quickly. But for applications that you plan to maintain, you really should change your source code to reflect the new header locations.

Optional files

There are several other optional files that you might like to have:

owlhlp.zip

has a help file for OWL Next that covers many new classes.

owlext30.zip

gives you some features that members of the OWLExt project added after Borland stopped developing OWL, but before OWL Next development began.

Many other files are available. It's worth looking at everything offered on the download page.

Further information

The OWL Next site contains much more than the download page. Have a look around, and do sign up for the mailing list. I posted several questions to the list while I first installed OWL Next, and got answers to all of them within a few hours.

Last updated: 6 June 2007