!Builder

Having decided to have a go at brewing my own ROMs, I have met an obstacle very early on. From where does one get a working copy of !Builder? Sprow gave a location not so long ago. However, the version I assembled from there will not run. The problem seems to be in the !Sprites file. !Builder itself refuses to run – error – sprite doesn’t exist. Trying to load the sprite file into Paint or DPScan also errors – Error from Paint: Unrecognised sprite data.

Is the sprite file corrupt? Alternatively, is there another source of !Builder?

Where are you getting the ROM source from? Builder should come with that.

Beginner’s guide on the wiki

A copy of !Builder from cvs looks just fine.

set CVSROOT :pserver:anonymous:@riscosopen.org:/home/rool/cvsroot
cvs -z 9  co castle/RiscOS/Apps/!Builder

A copy of !Builder should be present in the source code download, at that location within the download. The script run by !UnTarBZ2 copies that Apps directory into the root of the build environment and presents !Builder to the user.

A (slightly outdated) walkthrough here: http://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20131105

Where are you getting the ROM source from? Builder should come with that.

Downloaded source archive from https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/risc-os-tarballs

which is option 1 in the wiki page referred to. Extracted with UnTarBZ2.

Run Prepare.!Run to set up build tree. The output contains the following:

(Re)initialising primary build components…

mixed.RiscOS.Library:

mixed.RiscOS.Modules:

castle.RiscOS.Env:

castle.RiscOS.BuildSys:
castle.RiscOS.BuildSys not found. Ignored.

castle.RiscOS.Export:

castle.RiscOS.Apps.!Builder:
castle.RiscOS.Apps.!Builder not found. Ignored.

castle.RiscOS.Apps.!EraseCVS:
castle.RiscOS.Apps.!EraseCVS not found. Ignored.

castle.RiscOS.Apps.!WinEdit:
castle.RiscOS.Apps.!WinEdit not found. Ignored.

gpl.RiscOS.Apps.!Perl:
gpl.RiscOS.Apps.!Perl not found. Ignored.

gpl.RiscOS.Apps.!GCC:
gpl.RiscOS.Apps.!GCC not found. Ignored.

bsd.RiscOS.Apps.!CreateSEC:

bsd.RiscOS.Apps.!Routines:

bsd.RiscOS.Apps.!UnTarBZ2:
bsd.RiscOS.Apps.!UnTarBZ2 not found. Ignored.

mixed.RiscOS.Apps.!SharedLibs:
mixed.RiscOS.Apps.!SharedLibs not found. Ignored.

There seems to be a lot missing, although most of I already have anyway.

I am a bit baffled.

… and wondering where I am screwing up!

There seems to be a lot missing, … and wondering where I am screwing up!

Which tarball is it? In the past I have found that some of them are less than complete. That said the Pi ROM is just fine.

which is option 1 in the wiki page referred to. Extracted with UnTarBZ2.

If you loaded the first option, that is a copy of the CVS repository which needs the ‘CVS repository defaults’ option in UntarBz2 set.

I think you want a Source code archive. Chose the one for your computer BCM2385Dev is for a raspberry pi. Use this version of UNtarBZ2 as I’ve just fixed the bug with it not running prepare in some cases. When dearchiving Source code archives the default settings when you run untarbz2 will work.

Which tarball is it? In the past I have found that some of them are less than complete. That said the Pi ROM is just fine.

I downloaded the OMAP3 tarball for testing – the BB here is the one least likely to cause any problem if the ROM gets screwed.

I think you want a Source code archive.

I downloaded the OMAP3Dev source tarball as a test.

I’ll start again tomorrow.

I downloaded the OMAP3 tarball for testing

OMAP3Dev looks OK, !Builder is present.

I’ll start again tomorrow.

Good idea, must stop now before it is!

OK chaps. Problem solved. I redownloaded the OMAP3 source archive, but also redownloaded the UnTarBZ2. This may have been the problem, because the output generated during the extraction using the new UnTarBZ2 looked rather different to before. Everything ran automagically (didn’t need to explicitly run ’Prepare.!Run) and I ended up with !Builder on the iconbar ready to go. Bit late now to go much further.

Yes – mea culpa. I think it was due to using an old UnTarBZ2. Comparing the two versions, the control window of the old version contained only the source and dest fields, with cancel and run buttons. The new version has a whole load of option settings as well.