Category Archives: Linux

Getting started with compiling Wii apps in Linux

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First off, setting up a development environment, and then the ability to run the games on the Wii are very different. Since my Wii was on the latest official system upgrade (v4.3), there were not many options for getting a custom game boot loader on it. Thankfully, I went with the Indiana Pwns and it was super easy and straight forward. Now I have the Homebrew Loader installed by way of using the BootMii installer, and I am free to load my own compiled projects as well.

To get the development kit up and operational it involved a bit of guess work, but thankful I can still use my GNU C utilities.

From the “devkitPPC” directory, you’ll need the appropriate download for you host type. For me, it was devkitPPC_r21-x86_64-linux.tar.bz2

http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/

It extracts to ”devkitPPC/”. You can put this where every you’d like, but I kept everything as my limited privilege user, and created a directory $HOME/bin/opt/, and put the directory there. Next you’ll need to set a couple of ENV variables that most projects look for in their Makefile’s. In my $HOME/.bashrc I added

export DEVKITPPC=$HOME/bin/opt/devkitPPC/
export DEVKITPRO=$DEVKITPPC
export MANPATH=$MANPATH:$DEVKITPPC/man
export PATH=$PATH:$DEVKITPPC/bin

The manpath is for me :)

From the portlibs folder you’ll need everything with “ppc” in the name. The Wii’s proccesor is an IBM PowerPC chipset

http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/portlibs

Once you have all of these downloaded, a simple for loop will do well.

mkdir ${DEVKITPPC}/portlibs

for file in *ppc.tar.bz2 ; do tar -C ${DEVKITPPC}/portlibs/ -xjf $file ; done

Next, download libogc-src-*.tar.bz2 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/libogc/, and lets get it compiled and installed (also, it depends on the ENV variables and the libraries above). The make install below will put it in $DEVKITPPC.

mkdir libogc ; tar -C libogc -xjf libogrc-src-*.tar.bz2 ; cd libogc

make clean && make && make install

Lastly, getting libfat present and respectable. http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/libfat/ get the libfat-ogc-*.tar.bz2 tar ball

tar -C ${DEVKITPPC}/portlibs/ -xjf libfat-ogc-*.tar.bz2

cp ${DEVKITPPC}/portlibs/lib/wii/libfat.a ${DEVKITPPC}/portlibs/lib/libfat.a

At this point there is enough present to begin hacking or least compiling as a tester. To validate we have a good compiling ENV, lets try out libwiigui . It is a great framework to learn/use/get started with, but for now if we use it to a validation test. At the time of writing this, the latest was libwiigui-1.05.zip. So:

mkdir libwiigui ; cd libwiigui ; unzip ../libwiigui-1.05.zip

make clean && make

You should be left with two  new files (libwiigui-demo.elf and libwiigui-demo.dol).

On the SD card that I keep my HomeBrew applications on, I make a directory sd://apps/libwiigui/ and copy these two files into that directory, and rename them boot.elf and boot.dol respectively.

Now when I put the SD card in the Wii and launch the HomeBrew loader, I have a blank button (because I didn’t take the time to add icons and descriptions), and when clicked and loaded, there it the basic libwiigui framework app!

YAHTZEE!!

Take care,

vb

p.s. here are a couple of additional information links.

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Libwiigui/tutorial

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Developer_tips

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Various VIM builds for slackware -current

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In the past couple of days I have been staying unusually aware of updates and patches from the VIM project. I have uploaded several packages that have the latest patches of the 7.2 branch. Then for kicks and giggles I pulled down the 7.3a unstable build, but it is nothing released or ready.

One thing in particular, the 7.2.446 build does have --enable-rubyinterp compiled in, for supporting the Ruby interpreter. Someone had sent a link for the lusty-explorer script for VIM. While the prospects of the script look great, I was unable to give it whirl, since the stock VIM in slackware currently does not have the ruby interpreter compiled in.

Enjoy, and feel free to drop me your feedback.

Take care,

vb

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Blogs!

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Much time spent today surrounding blogs of sorts. Adding new services for friends and customers. Upgrading to the latest wordpress 3.0, and so forth.
I figured it may be a good time to bump this blog of my own. If for now other reason, but to express how nice, simple and easy a LAMP stack is on Linux.

After attempting to play support for a family member’s OSX server. The voodoo happening that is running many of the services, is beyond my interest of discoverying why and how Apple is venturing away from being a Unix. It seems they are going the way of Microsoft. Little signs like keeping files like /etc/resolv.conf present, but symlinked off somewhere else. Furthermore, it includes a warning the most processes of the operating system do not use it. How frustrating.

Give me a Linux host.

Take care,
vb

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using the new rpm2tgz, with flags!!

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In slackware-current as of 2010-02-23,  the traditional command used for very basic archive conversion of RPMs into a TAR’d.Gzip’d archive, just got a hint of flare. :)

Normal usage is typically for easily converting an RPM that you’d like to review, like a ‘src’ RPM.

But you may find yourself saying, if I could just quickly/easily install <xyz>.rpm on my system as slackware package, it would make life a bit easier. Well now there are several flags available, to be used AT YOUR OWN RISK ;)

If you execute rpm2tgz with no arguments, it will output the following

$ rpm2tgz
/usr/bin/rpm2tgz:  Converts RPM format to standard GNU tar + GNU zip format.
            (view converted packages with "less", install and remove
            with "installpkg", "removepkg", "pkgtool", or manually
            with "tar")

Usage:      /usr/bin/rpm2tgz [OPTION] 
            (Outputs "file.tgz")

  -s    extract the install scripts to /usr/doc/$PRGNAM-$VERSION/
          for review.
  -S    extracts the install scripts to be executed on package installation
          (only pre-install and post-install scripts used)
          USE WITH CAUTION!
  -n    name the output package using the rpm's metadata
  -r    extract what the rpm's "requires" (dependencies)
          as documention to /usr/doc/$PRGNAM-$VERSION/
  -d    attempt a wellformed slack-desc from the rpm meta data

Everything is pretty straight forward on what it does, but lets have an example. Say you want hulu-desktop, so you download a file called “huludesktop-x86_64.rpm”, and with traditional usage of rpm2tgz, you would have a resulting archive named “huludesktop-x86_64.tgz”. This is fine if you are not going to install it, but if you do plan on installing this archive, now it does not conform to the naming convention.

With the flags available, you can specify the following command

$ sudo rpm2tgz -srdn huludesktop-x86_64.rpm

and get a resulting package called “huludesktop-0.9.7-x86_64-1.tgz”.

All flags are not needed, for every situation, and particular ones should be used with care (-S), which can and may frequently wreak havoc on your system.

Take care,

vb

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