Install the Bol Processor (BP3)

Installing the Bol Processor BP3 does not require any pro­gram­ming skills. Just use the installers for MacOS and Windows, or the instal­la­tion scripts for Linux.

To use the Bol Processor BP3, you first need to install a local Apache HTML/PHP serv­er on your desk­top com­put­er. This serv­er runs a ded­i­cat­ed "web ser­vice" that is restrict­ed to your com­put­er. Only PHP (with its GD Graphics option) needs to be run­ning, as no data­base is used by the Bol Processor interface.

On MacOS and Windows we rec­om­mend MAMP or XAMPP, both of which are Apache servers with pre-installed fea­tures. On Linux, XAMPP is the only choice. The pro­ce­dure is giv­en on the pages that show the instal­la­tion of BP3 in the dif­fer­ent sys­tems, see below.

Once you've installed MAMP or XAMPP, installing Bol Processor is almost a one-click process.

MacOS users can quick­ly do the instal­la­tion using an installer called BolProcessorInstaller.pkg.
Follow instruc­tions on this page.

Windows users can quick­ly do the instal­la­tion using an installer called BolProcessorInstaller.exe.
Follow instruc­tions on this page.

Linux users can quick­ly do the instal­la­tion using ded­i­cat­ed scripts.
Follow instruc­tions on this page.

👉   Once you've installed the Bol Processor BP3, use this page to famil­iarise your­self with how to use it.

The file structure of your installation

👉  Only for geeks!

Let us assume that your instal­la­tion was suc­cess­ful. It cre­at­ed a "htdocs/bolprocessor" fold­er.

The file struc­ture inside this fold­er is shown on the left. There is noth­ing relat­ed to Bol Processor out­side of this folder.

This image includes "bp" which is the com­piled ver­sion of the BP3 con­sole for MacOS. The same is called "bp.exe" in Windows and "bp3" in Linux.

The "temp_bolprocessor" and "my_output" fold­ers are auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­at­ed when the inter­face is run. The con­tents of the "temp_bolprocessor" fold­er is cleared of all files/folders old­er than 24 hours.

Another fold­er called "midi_resources" is also cre­at­ed to store the set­tings for the real-time MIDI input and out­put ports.

Two addi­tion­al fold­ers, "csound_resources" and "tonality_resources", are cre­at­ed by the instal­la­tion and filled with data shared by all projects.

Running the inter­face will also cre­ate "BP2_help.html" in the "php" fold­er using "BP2_help.txt" as its source.

The "ctests" fold­er — which we call a work­space — con­tains sam­ple mate­r­i­al used to check the oper­a­tion of Bol Processor and to illus­trate some musi­co­log­i­cal issues. It is updat­ed by the instal­la­tion scripts each time you upgrade to a new version.

If you cre­ate new mate­r­i­al in the "ctests" work­space it won't be delet­ed by upgrades. However, if you mod­i­fy files that come from the dis­tri­b­u­tion, they will revert to the cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion ver­sion on each upgrade. It is there­fore a good idea to keep a copy of the "ctests" fold­er, as you are like­ly to mod­i­fy some of its data files while using the pro­gram. You may want to restore the orig­i­nal ver­sions lat­er. You can also cre­ate your own work­spaces (in tree struc­tures) using either the BP3 inter­face or your computer's file manager.