This page describes how to get started with snapmake.

A Snapper Project or application is contained on a file system with a specific directory hierarchy.  A project can be created using the snaputil utility.  This allows for easy development, and for the application to be stored under version control, i.e. cvs. Snapper is only interested in directories and files that it knows about.  Any unknown directories or files that it encounters will be ignored.  This is convenient for adding support files and directories such as database scripts or makefiles, etc.  Here is the gtk_pizza application from the snapper-contrib module, note that every application should have a top-level directory.

[bill@shark contrib]$ ls -lF

gtk_pizza/
pixmaps/
gtk_pizza.rc

The directory "gtk_pizza" contains the Snapper application.  The directory "pixmaps" contains pixmap files used by the application.  Look at the code for "snapoix" for an example of how to embed pixmaps into the application XML file.   The file "gtk_pizza.rc" is a GTK Resource file read by the application at startup.  Here is the application structure.

[bill@shark contrib]$ ls -lR gtk_pizza
gtk_pizza:
    CVS/
    database/
    header/
    MAIN.module/
gtk_pizza/database:
    hotpizza.pg.sql.gz
gtk_pizza/header:
    project.options
    start_script.pl
gtk_pizza/MAIN.module:
    scripts/
    widget/
gtk_pizza/MAIN.module/scripts:
    001_customer_screen.pl
    001_DB.pl
    001_display_screen.pl
    001_docket_screen.pl
    001_login_screen.pl
    001_message_box.pl
    001_order_screen.pl
    001_select_cust_screen.pl
    001_select_screen.pl
    001_user_utils.pl
    001_utils.pl
    999_startup.pl
gtk_pizza/MAIN.module/widget:
    MAIN.glade
    oix.xml

The directories in red are the directories that snapmake is interested in and will examine.  Any scripts, glade data, or oix data found will be combined into the application XML file.  The directories "database" and "CVS" are left alone and are useful for storing the schema used by the application and cvs data.   They will not be included in the application XML file.

The directories that end in ".module" contain two directories, i.e. scripts, and widget .  The name of this directory is the module name and is used in function calls.  Files that end in ".pl" in the scripts directory will be read and incorporated into the application XML file.  The widget directory contains the glade XML file and the oix data XML file.  This data will also be combined into the application XML file.

The special directory header in the top-level application directory is used to store the project options and the startup or bootstrap code.  Sample start scripts can be found in the samples directory or contrib.

Building the application XML file can be as simple as typing the following from the command line:

[bill@shark contrib]$ snapmake -d gtk_pizza -c -f gtk_pizza.pl

After some output text, the resulting perl script gtk_pizza.pl can be executed as follows:

[bill@shark contrib]$ perl gtk_pizza.pl

If the -c option is specified then snapmake combines the various pieces into a single XML schema and will insert this data into the startup script.  There is more information in the snapmake manual.  Snapmake is used as follows:

snapmake [-f|file=filename] [-d|directory=directory]
         [-c|complile] [-r|readonly] [-m|module=module]
         [-p|pixmap]=directory [-h|help]

If pixmap files are used as opposed to embedding the pixmap data in the XML application file then a pixmap directory needs to be passed to snapmake.  The default directory is ./pixmaps.  The function build memory can be passed the location of the pixmap directory, and snapmake can do this for you by embedding the tag __SNAPPER_PIXMAP__ in your startup script.  Here is an example from the gtk_pizza startup script.

$SnapRun::xml->build_memory($xml_text,'__SNAPPER_PIXMAP__');

After snapmake runs it will replace the tag with the absolute path.  On my cygwin system it looks like this:

$SnapRun::xml->build_memory($xml_text,'/home/IBM_USER/wks/snapper-perl/contrib/pixmaps/');