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How to compile Frontier Kernel for Win32 and VC6

Author:		David Gewirtz
Posted:		3/22/2005; 6:58:27 PM
Topic:		How to compile Frontier Kernel for Win32 and VC6
Msg #:		9 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next:		8/10
Reads:		6984

Well, I actually managed to compile a working version of the Frontier Kernel for Windows 32. Below are the steps.

1. First, I installed Visual C++ 6.0. This was a bit disconcerting, since VC6 dates back to 1998, but the code seems to like it. Took me a while to dig out VC6 from my old disk archives.
2. Next, I downloaded the Frontier Kernel off the main http://frontierkernel.sourceforge.net page. The link you'll want is http://frontierkernel.sourceforge.net/src/Frontier_src.tgz. It's important to note that this is a different download from the file you'll get if you go to http://www.sourceforge.net and then visit the Frontier Kernel project. Those files are out of date and don't have the build code for VC6.
3. I used WinRAR to decompress the tarball and drop it on my drive. Inside the newly created folder is a build_VC6 folder. Navigate into that and double-click on Frontier.dsp, which is the project file.
4. Choose Set Active Configuration from the Build menu and change the configuration to the Win32 Release configuration. This is a change from the initial posting, per Andre's suggestions.
5. From within VC6, select Build Frontier.exe from the Build Menu. Sonofabitch, if the damn thing didn't build through to creation!
6. But, you won't be able to run Frontier with just the frontier.exe file (which winds up, by the way, by default in the \build_VC6\Release\ directory. You'll need to download frontier.root from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/frontierkernel/Frontier10.0a1win.zip?download. This is also reachable from the Root Databases section at http://frontierkernel.sourceforge.net page.
7. Extract the frontier.root file and put it in the \build_VC6\Release\ directory alongside frontier.exe.
8. Now execute frontier.exe. If you've never run Frontier before, you might not realize it opens initially with a little cactus icon in the task bar. Go ahead and double-click that and you'll get a fully running version of Frontier.

Some notes: This is a minimal build. I did no fussing at all, and mainResponder (which handles all the Web site interactions) is not part of this process. But the thing does build and you can then go in and do your stuff.