OWLNext 6.40 is now stable!

After spending nearly 6 months in beta-testing mode, since the release of 6.40.0 Beta late June, we now declare OWLNext 6.40 stable with the release of update 6.40.5. We hope 6.40 now will be adopted and work reliably for all of you that want the latest and greatest the OWLNext project has to offer.

The big ticket feature in 6.40 is, of course, the new support for 64-bit compilation. We have tested 64-bit builds with both the latest Visual Studio Community 2013 edition, as well as the latest C++Builder XE7 (BCC64). The results look good. Both of these compilers build and run OWLNext and OWLNext examples cleanly at the default warning level. And while there are some warts in the 32-bit C++Builder compiler (BCC32), full 32-bit compatibility has been retained. In fact, for the first time, BCC32 builds the OWLNext core with no warnings.

There have been improvements in the build system as well. The bcmake driver for C++Builder now detects the compiler version automatically, and the bc.mak makefile has had a major clean-up. OWLMaker supports 32-bit and 64-bit compilation for Visual Studio 2010-2013, as well as 32-bit compilation for C++Builder XE-XE7. Alas, we haven't been able to incorporate support in OWLMaker for 64-bit C++Builder (BCC64). However, we have provided C++Builder projects within the source directories that can be used to build the 64-bit libraries and examples from the C++Builder IDE. For those of you who prefer working with IDEs, we have provided similar build projects for Visual Studio.

We also like to remind everyone that we now have very convenient online documentation for OWLNext. Have you ever wondered what the event handler signature for WM_COPYDATA is? Just search the net for "TDispatch WM_COPYDATA", and you will be directed right to the answer.

Go to our wiki to learn more about OWLNext 6.40.

Big thanks to all donors and contributors!