Developing

Developing Davex

Developing Davex used four main components to go from source code to disk images:

• Ant - orchestrates the build process
• Java SDK - compiles Java-based server
• cc65 - a multiplatform toolchain with a nice 6502 macro assembler named ca65
• AppleCommander - a cross-platform virtual disk manipulation program

You will need to have an IDE that incorporates these elements (the source tree is a ready-made project in Eclipse), or you can download the tools individually and just ensure that ant, Java, and ca65 are invokable from the command line.

Download the Code

The first step is to download the code. See the Code page for details on that. You will do well to use a command-line version of svn, or an IDE that incorporates it.

Prepare the Environment

Navigate to the build directory. Copy the file named Davex-default.properties to a new file named Davex.properties in the same directory and modify it to point to the place where your ca65 executable lives. For example:

assemblerPath=/usr/local/bin

Ensure that you have the ca65 version V2.13.9 or later.

Build

Now you're ready to build. All you need to do is type ant and the Ant build system will take over. You should see output something like this (omitting lots of interesting details):

Buildfile: build.xml
clean:
   [delete] Deleting directory obj
assemble:
     [echo] Assembling Davex source...
builddsk:
   [delete] Deleting: dist\DavexProDOS.dsk
     [copy] Copying 1 file to dist
     [echo] Copying files to ProDOS 5.25 disk image...
     [echo] ProDOS 5.25 disk image complete.
all:
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 20 seconds

Once the build is successful, completed disk images should be in the dist directory.