- Home website: http://mctrl.org
- Main code repo: http://github.com/mity/mctrl
mCtrl is C library providing set of additional user interface controls for
MS Windows, intended to be complementary to standard Win32API controls from
USER32.DLL
and COMCTL32.DLL
.
API of the library is designed to be similar to the Win32API. I.e. after window
class of particular control is registered with corresponding initialization
function, the control can be normally created with the Win32API's functions
CreateWindow()
or CreateWindowEx()
and controlled with SendMessage()
.
You can always get the latest version and most actual information on project home site:
There are usually two packages for each release version available:
mCtrl-x.y.z-bin.zip
: pre-built binary packagemCtrl-x.y.z-src.zip
: source package
The pre-built package contains 32-bit as well as 64-bit binaries of MCTRL.DLL
and examples, and also documentation for application developers. The source
package is direct export of source tree from version control system repository.
The current code (possibly untested and unstable) can also be cloned from git repository hosted on github:
The pre-built release package has the following directory structure:
mCtrl-x.y.z/
| AUTHORS # List of authors contributing to the project
| COPYING # GNU General Public License
| COPYING.lib # GNU Lesser General Public License
| README.md # This file
|
+- bin/ # 32-bit binaries
| | mCtrl.dll # MCTRL.DLL
| | example-*.exe # Pre-built examples
| |
| +- debug-gcc/
| | mCtrl.dll # Debug build of MCTRL.DLL (built with gcc)
| |
| +- debug-msvc/
| mCtrl.dll # Debug build of MCTRL.DLL (built with Visual Studio)
| mCtrl.pdb # Visual Studio debug info
|
+- bin64/ # 64-bit binaries
| | mCtrl.dll # MCTRL.DLL
| | example-*.exe # Pre-built examples
| |
| +- debug-gcc/
| | mCtrl.dll # Debug build of MCTRL.DLL (built with gcc)
| |
| +- debug-msvc/
| mCtrl.dll # Debug build of MCTRL.DLL (built with Visual Studio)
| mCtrl.pdb # Visual Studio debug info
|
+- doc/ # Reference manual
| *.html
|
+- examples/ # Examples
| CMakeLists.txt # CMake recipe for building the examples
| *.c; *.h; *.rc # Source files of the examples
|
+- include/
| | mctrl.h # All-in-one public header (includes all mCtrl/*.h)
| |
| +- mCtrl/
| *.h # mCtrl public headers
|
+- lib/ # 32-bit import libraries
| libmCtrl.dll.a # Import library for gcc
| mCtrl.lib # Import library for Visual Studio
|
+- lib64/ # 64-bit import libraries
libmCtrl.dll.a # Import library for gcc
mCtrl.lib # Import library for Visual Studio
Using mCtrl is as easy as using any other DLL, just tell your compiler and linker where it can find mCtrl headers and libraries.
Note you should instruct your C/C++ compiler to search for header files in
the include
directory and use the directory mCtrl
as part of preprocessor
#include
directives, e.g.:
#include <mCtrl/dialog.h>
#include <mCtrl/treelist.h>
Disclaimer: If you want to just use MCTRL.DLL
you should probably stick with
the pre-built package.
To build mCtrl yourself from the source package or cloned git repository, first of all you need to use CMake 3.1 (or newer) to generate project files, Makefile or whatever the development tool-chain of your choice expects.
It's recommended to use out-of-source-tree builds, so create e.g. a directory
build
in the main mCtrl directory. (If you choose to build in other
directory, replace the ..
in the following instructions with path pointing
to the root mCtrl directory.)
mCtrl is known to successfully build within following environments.
To build with MSYS + mingw-w64 + Make:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -G "MSYS Makefiles" ..
$ make
To build with MSYS + mingw-w64 + Ninja:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -G "Ninja" ..
$ ninja
To build with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 or 2015:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 2013" .. # MSVC 2013, 32-bit build
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 2013 Win64" .. # MSVC 2013, 64-bit build
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 2015" .. # MSVC 2015, 32-bit build
$ cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" .. # MSVC 2015, 64-bit build
Then open the generated solution file build/mCtrl.sln
in Visual Studio and
build the target ALL_BUILD
.
Other CMake generators may or may not work. If they do not, then one or more
CMakeLists.txt
files within mCtrl directory tree may need some tuning.
Notes:
-
Unfortunately, CMake does not support generating projects targeting multiple architectures. To build both 32 and 64-bit binaries, you have to generate project files or Makefiles twice and build them separately (in different directories).
-
For gcc tool-chains, you may need to specify path to
gcc
if you want to use different gcc version then the one in your$PATH
, e.g. if you have multiple mingw-w64 variants installed, one targeting 32-bit and one 64-bit build. You may do so by setting the variableCC
prior using CMake. CMake is smart enough to derive paths to other tools like linker or resource compiler automatically.
export CC=/path/to/the/desired/gcc
Use
$ cmake --help
and refer to CMake documentation to learn more about CMake, its options and capabilities.
Finally, consider running a mCtrl test-suite to verify correctness of your build. The test suite, as well as some examples demonstrating mCtrl, are built as part of the mCtrl build process.
mCtrl itself is covered with the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 or
(at your option) any later version. See file COPYING.lib
for more info.
In brief, this generally means that:
-
Any program or library, even commercial, covered with any proprietary license, is allowed to link against the mCtrl's import libraries and distribute
MCTRL.DLL
along with the program. -
You can modify
MCTRL.DLL
(or its source code) and distribute such modifiedMCTRL.DLL
only if the modifications are also licensed under the terms of the LGPL 2.1 (or any later version); or under the terms of GPL 2 (or any later version).
Source code of all examples, i.e. contents of the directory examples
within
the source package (see below), are in public domain.
If you encounter any bug, please be so kind and report it. Unheard bugs cannot get fixed. You can submit bug reports here:
Please provide the following information with the bug report:
- mCtrl version you are using.
- Whether you use 32-bit or 64-bit build of mCtrl.
- OS version where you reproduce the issue.
- As explicit description of the issue as possible, i.e. what behavior you expect and what behavior you see. (Reports of the kind "it does not work." do not help).
- If relevant, consider attaching a screenshot or some code reproducing the issue.