Quick install Windows

   

This is a sup­ple­ment to the page Bol Processor ‘BP3’ and its PHP inter­face.

A one-click installer of Bol Processor BP3 is avail­able. It is called "BolProcessorInstaller.exe" and it can be down­loaded here (unique location).

This installer is used for both ini­tial instal­la­tion and updates. Each time you run it, it will down­load the lat­est ver­sions of the BP3 con­sole, includ­ing its source files, the inter­face PHP files, and the sam­ple set con­tained in the 'ctests' fold­er. Data, gram­mars and scripts that you've cre­at­ed will not be delet­ed. However, if you have mod­i­fied files in the 'ctests' fold­er, they will be revert­ed to the dis­tri­b­u­tion version.

This instal­la­tion is checked with Windows 10 run­ning on an HP Intel Core i5-6200U (64-bit, 8 Gb RAM) and MAMP (free) run­ning PHP 8.3.1. It should work fine with Windows 11, please check it and report!

👉   6 January 2025: I found out that "BolProcessorInstaller.exe" works fine on my com­put­er only because it was cre­at­ed on the same machine… Other com­put­ers will send a warn­ing that it is from an "unknown author", and pos­si­bly trash it as "con­tain­ing a virus"! This means that it needs to be cer­ti­fied in the same way as the MacOS installer. I spent more than 120 euros on a "cryp­to­graph­ic card" sent from Poland (https://shop.certum.eu) to start this process, which is sup­posed to be free for open source projects, but the process itself is unclear.… Wait and see!

First install MAMP or XAMPP

If you try to run the installer (see below), it will first check that a local Apache serv­er (MAMP or XAMPP) has been installed. Both are suit­able since the Bol Processor inter­face con­tains exclu­sive­ly HTML, PHP and JavaScript code. No data­base is required.

if you choose the (free) MAMP ver­sion, both MAMP and MAMP PRO will be installed, and the inter­face will occa­sion­al­ly invite you to "upgrade" to MAMP PRO. But you don't need it for the Bol Processor!

For MAMP on Windows, the "htdocs" fold­er is in "C:\MAMP".
For XAMPP on Windows, the "htdocs" fold­er is in "C:\xampp". (To be verified)

If you want Apache to start auto­mat­i­cal­ly when you start your com­put­er, this process is easy with MAMP, but a bit more com­plex with XAMPP: try this method.

Create the 'bp.exe' console

After installing MAMP or XAMPP, run the installer "BolProcessorInstaller.exe" down­loaded here.

👉 The installer cre­ates a "bol­proces­sor" fold­er in the "htdocs" fold­er used by MAMP or XAMPP. Make sure that there is only one such fold­er on your machine, notably if you tried both MAMP and XAMPP in the past. It is safe to rename any unused "htdocs" fold­er before run­ning the installer.

If you plan to install the "bolprocessor" fold­er out­side the "htdocs" fold­er, fol­low the instruc­tions in Relocating "bol­proces­sor" before run­ning the installer.

As "BolProcessorInstaller.exe" is not yet cer­ti­fied, you may receive a warn­ing that it is from an "unknown source". Click on the option to ignore the warn­ing. If you don't feel con­fi­dent about doing this, please read the sec­tion on Security below.

All steps of the instal­la­tion are dis­played to ensure that they are suc­cess­ful. At the end you'll be asked to press a key.

Now start MAMP or XAMPP. There is an Open WebStart Page but­ton on MAMP (free) which will dis­play a page con­firm­ing that the Apache serv­er is run­ning. Probably you will find a Go to Application but­ton on XAMPP man­ag­er.

Point your brows­er at localhost/bolprocessor/php/. This will dis­play the home page of Bol Processor BP3. Otherwise, check that MAMP or XAMPP is set to use port #80.

If you see this image at the top right of the page, the con­sole is ready. Click on the lamp if you pre­fer to use the light mode for the interface.

You can ignore the next sec­tion. 😀

Compile the 'bp.exe' console (if necessary)

The Windows instal­la­tion of Bol Processor includes the pre-compiled con­sole (named 'bp.exe' ). If, some some rea­son, the con­sole is not respond­ing, or if you mod­i­fied its source code (in the source/BP3 direc­to­ry), you may need to recom­pile it.

If you see this image at the top right of the page, your life will be easy!

All you have to do is click on the link to com­pile the con­sole, which will take a minute or two.

If the frame says that 'gcc' is not respond­ing (see pic­ture) you need to install MinGW. This is the main draw­back of Windows: its default instal­la­tion does not han­dle 'gcc' (the stan­dard C com­pil­er). You need 'gcc' to com­pile the Bol Processor con­sole, and per­haps oth­er appli­ca­tions to come. So, install MinGW, care­ful­ly fol­low­ing instruc­tions on this page. It is sim­ple, but you shouldn't miss a step!

Once 'gcc' is respond­ing, reload the Bol Processor home page and click on the link to com­pile the console.

Install Csound

Csound is not required to run the Bol Processor, as you can work with MIDI files and real-time MIDI. However, it will give you access to a dif­fer­ent approach to sound synthesis.

Just down­load a pre-built instal­la­tion of Csound from its down­load page. Select "64bit Full Installer 6.18.1".

The BP3 inter­face will be able to fig­ure out the loca­tion of "csound.exe" and fix its path accord­ing­ly. If it does not respond, you will be asked to change the path and per­haps the name of the Csound con­sole (see image). Once it works after a mod­i­fi­ca­tion, please con­tact us so that we can update the default paths and names of Csound in your instal­la­tion of Windows.

😀  Now, the Bol Processor is ful­ly operational!

You can try exam­ples con­tained in the "ctests" fold­er, or fol­low the guid­ed tour on the page Bol Processor ‘BP3’ and its PHP inter­face.

Updating to new versions

To update the Bol Processor con­sole, its PHP inter­face and exam­ples (the con­tents of the "ctests" fold­er), sim­ply rerun the installer. It will down­load and install the lat­est ver­sions of the soft­ware and data. It will also delete and replace the com­piled "bp.exe" con­sole.

The installer will not mod­i­fy or delete any data you have cre­at­ed in the "ctests" fold­er or out­side it. However, if you have mod­i­fied a sam­ple file with­out chang­ing its name, it will be revert­ed to its dis­tri­b­u­tion version.

The installer will also pre­serve the "_settings.php" file (if it exists), which con­tains your project settings.

Security

You are right to be con­cerned about secu­ri­ty. Can you be sure that you have down­loaded the cor­rect ver­sion of "BolProcessorInstaller.exe"?

The size of this file is exact­ly 1811129 bytes and its MD5 is
d6c61e0acce74bf66033ce57319298d5. You can calculate the MD5 on this page. These numbers will indeed be subject to change with the release of new versions of the installer. The current version is dated 3 January 2025.

👉  Please DO NOT SHARE THE INSTALLER, only its link: https://bolprocessor.org/misc/BolProcessorInstaller.exe

You may also want to know all the details of how it works. Geeks may want to cus­tomise it for their own use. Just down­load this fold­er which con­tains the source files (installer.ps1 and setup.iss) along with a sum­ma­ry of how to build the installer.

For read­ers not con­ver­sant with Windows PowerShell, the fol­low­ing is a descrip­tion of the process in human language:

Check that an Apache serv­er MAMP or XAMPP is installed by find­ing either MAMP\htdocs or xampp\htdocs on the com­put­er (not case-sensitive). If it is not found, exit with the warn­ing that either MAMP or XAMPP should be installed.

Download the lat­est dis­tri­b­u­tion files from GitHub:
https://github.com/bolprocessor/bolprocessor/archive/graphics-for-BP3.zip
https://github.com/bolprocessor/php-frontend/archive/master.zip
https://github.com/bolprocessor/bp3-ctests/archive/main.zip

Unzip these three files. They cre­ate fold­ers with names:
bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3
php-frontend-master
bp3-ctests-main

Create a fold­er named "bol­proces­sor" (if it does not yet exist) inside the "htdocs" fold­er of the Apache server

Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/source to htdocs/bolprocessor/
If there is already a "source" fold­er, delete it

Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/Makefile to htdocs/bolprocessor/
Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/BP2_help.txt to htdocs/bolprocessor/
Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/Credits.txt to htdocs/bolprocessor/
Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/BP3-To-Do.txt to htdocs/bolprocessor/
Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/License.txt to htdocs/bolprocessor/
Copy bolprocessor-graphics-for-BP3/ReadMe.txt to htdocs/bolprocessor/

Copy bolprocessor/php/_settings.php to bolprocessor/ (if it exists)

Copy php-frontend-master/php to htdocs/bolprocessor/
If there is already a "php" fold­er, delete it

Copy bolprocessor/_settings.php to bolprocessor/php/ (if it exists)

Create a fold­er htdocs/bolprocessor/csound_resources if it does not yet exist

Copy the con­tent of php-frontend-master/csound_resources to htdocs/bolprocessor/csound_resources
Files that already exist should be replaced with their updat­ed versions

Create a fold­er htdocs/bolprocessor/ctests if it does not yet exist

Copy the con­tent of bp3-ctests-main to htdocs/bolprocessor/ctests
Files that already exist should be replaced with their updat­ed versions

Delete the tem­po­rary down­load directory

Replace htdocs/bolprocessor/bp.exe with the updat­ed version.

Relocating "bolprocessor"

The Bol Processor can be installed out­side the "htdocs" fold­er cre­at­ed by MAMP or XAMPP (on your boot dri­ve). You might want it near relat­ed projects, or use extra space from an exter­nal hard dri­ve. There may also be sit­u­a­tions where cre­at­ing files on the boot dri­ve is restricted.

Fortunately, the process of relo­cat­ing is very simple.

If you have already cre­at­ed a "bolprocessor" fold­er by run­ning the installer, copy it to the desired loca­tion and delete it from the "htdocs" fold­er. If not, cre­ate an emp­ty "bolprocessor" fold­er in the desired location.

Let's say you've cre­at­ed an emp­ty fold­er called "bolprocessor" inside a fold­er called "MUSIC" on an exter­nal dri­ve labelled "D", and MAMP is installed on dri­ve "C". Right-click the start icon at the bot­tom left of the screen, and select Windows PowerShell (admin). Then type the fol­low­ing com­mand to cre­ate a sym­bol­ic link:

mklink /D "C:\MAMP\htdocs\bolprocessor" "D:\MUSIC\bolprocessor"

If you are using XAMPP, replace "\MAMP\" with "\xampp\".

Make sure that the sym­bol­ic link you cre­at­ed points to the cor­rect loca­tion: you will now see a "bolprocessor" icon in the "htdocs" fold­er. Double-click it, it should open the des­ti­na­tion folder.

You can now safe­ly run the installer. Updates to new ver­sions will be the same way.

Make sure you use the lat­est ver­sion of the installer, as it is designed to work with sym­bol­ic links.

👉 Never change the names of the "bolprocessor" fold­er and sym­bol­ic link, oth­er­wise the instal­la­tion will fail.

The first time you run the Bol Processor, MAMP or XAMPP may ask your per­mis­sion to dis­play files out­side its "htdocs" fold­er. Please con­tact us if you're expe­ri­enc­ing issues with this relocation!

You can use the same tech­nique to relo­cate some data files out­side the "bolprocessor" fold­er, for exam­ple to a loca­tion shared by Dropbox.

Uninstall the Bol Processor

Uninstalling the Bol Processor and all the data down­loaded or cre­at­ed for its use, is very sim­ple: delete the "bolprocessor" fold­er and the "htdocs\bolprocessor" sym­bol­ic link, if you have cre­at­ed one.

Bernard Bel
Created: August 2024