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.

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 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).

First install MAMP or XAMPP

The (free) MAMP device run­ning on Windows 10 (July 2024). Note that Apache Server is active. You can click "Open WebStart Page" to check that it is effective.

If you try to run the installer, 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 prompt 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,

Compile the 'bp.exe' console

After installing MAMP or XAMPP, run the installer "BolProcessorInstaller.exe" down­loaded here . In case both MAMP and XAMPP are installed (a bad idea!) the installer will choose MAMP.

Now start MAMP or XAMPP and point your brows­er at localhost/bolprocessor/php/. This will dis­play the home page of Bol Processor BP3.

If you see this frame in the 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, and it will han­dle micro­tonal­i­ty.

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

A frame ask­ing you to cor­rect the path to Csound. This is the default path for Windows 10, by the way. We tricked the inter­face into say­ing it was wrong!

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 instal­la­tion. It will down­load and install the lat­est ver­sions of the soft­ware and data. It will delete the com­piled "bp.exe" con­sole and prompt you to recom­pile it (with a sin­gle click).

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 1810907 bytes and its MD5 is
d4c49a64b9f7cfeaced1bc6853d5ccc7. 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. Current version: 27 October 2024. 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

Delete htdocs/bolprocessor/bp.exe if it exists. This ensures that the con­sole is recom­piled after each update.

Uninstall the Bol Processor

Uninstalling the Bol Processor and all the data down­loaded or cre­at­ed for its use, is very sim­ple: delete the "htdocs/bolprocessor" fold­er.

Bernard Bel
August 2024