Install the Bol Processor (BP3)

Installing the Bol Processor (BP3) does not require any pro­gram­ming skills. Just down­load and run the installers for MacOS and Windows, or the instal­la­tion scripts for Linux. The same installers and scripts can be used to upgrade an exist­ing BP3 with­out any loss of data or change to the settings.

On MacOS the pro­ce­dure is very sim­ple: run the installer to create/upgrade the stand­alone "BolProcessor.app" appli­ca­tion. BP3 cur­rent­ly runs on macOS Tahoe ver­sion 26 (and old­er versions).

👉  You can also run the Bol Processor BP3 on MacOS with a HTML/PHP serv­er. Features are iden­ti­cal for both options.

 On Windows and Linux, you still 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. This part of the imple­men­ta­tion is described on the pages that show the instal­la­tion of BP3 in the dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments, see below.

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

A help file will be com­piled when run­ning the Bol Processor. You can read a pre­view.

MacOS users can quick­ly do the instal­la­tion using a (nota­rized) installer called BolProcessorInstaller.pkg.
Follow instruc­tions on this page.

Windows users can quick­ly do the instal­la­tion using a (cer­ti­fied) 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, vis­it this page to famil­iarise your­self with how to use it.

The file structure of your installation

👉  Only for geeks!

The fol­low­ing is the file struc­ture when run­ning the Bol proces­sor with an Apache HTML/PHP serv­er. If you have installed the stand­alone "BolProcessor.app" appli­ca­tion, the struc­ture is made vis­i­ble by select­ing "Show Package Contents" and mov­ing down to "Contents/Resources/www", which is spe­cif­ic to PHP Desktop.

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 con­sole is called "bp.exe" in Windows and "bp3" in Linux. In Linux, "bp3" will not be vis­i­ble imme­di­ate­ly after the instal­la­tion because it needs to be cre­at­ed (in a sin­gle click) by the com­pil­er. In Windows, "bp.exe" is installed, so that no com­pi­la­tion is required. The same is true for "bp" in MacOS.

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 which were cre­at­ed in a dif­fer­ent session.

Another fold­er called "midi_resources" is also cre­at­ed to store the set­tings for your 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 your computer's file manager.

GitHub repositories

👉  Only for geeks!

Accessing GitHub repos­i­to­ries is not a reli­able method for installing or updat­ing the Bol Processor. The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed for ref­er­ence only. The files labelled "last ver­sion" are the ones down­loaded by the installer scripts.

Files for the Bol Processor project are stored in three repositories:

• The con­sole (C code) is stored in:
  https://github.com/bolprocessor/bolprocessor/tree/graphics-for-BP3
  👉  Please note that this is a branch of the (obso­lete) mas­ter branch.
  This repos­i­to­ry con­tains a few addi­tion­al files such as "BP3_help.txt", "BP3-changes.txt", "BP3-To-Do.txt", "change_permissions.sh", and "Makefile" for the C com­pi­la­tion.
  The last ver­sion:
  ➡ https://github.com/bolprocessor/bolprocessor/archive/graphics-for-BP3.zip
• The PHP inter­face is stored in:
  https://github.com/bolprocessor/php-frontend/
  This repos­i­to­ry also con­tains fold­ers "tonality_resources" and "csound_resources".
  The last ver­sion:
  ➡ https://github.com/bolprocessor/php-frontend/archive/master.zip
• The 'ctests' set of exam­ples is stored in:
  https://github.com/bolprocessor/bp3-ctests/
  The last ver­sion:
  ➡ https://github.com/bolprocessor/bp3-ctests/archive/main.zip

These con­tents may vary across devel­op­ments. Therefore, pri­or­i­ty should be giv­en to using installers or instal­la­tion scripts.