Sometimes you may want to extend your Dev-C++ programming environment. Maybe you want to use some library, like wxWidgets or Allegro, maybe you want to use latest development version of MinGW instead of the one supplied with Dev-C++. For this purpose, the creators of Dev-C++ introduced development package, in short devpak. You can imagine devpak as a plug-in for Dev-C++. It has form of a file with DevPak extension.
Note: The short name is devpak, not devpack.
If you want to know which devpaks you have already installed, run the Package Manager a.k.a. PackMan. PackMan is installed together with Dev-C++, it's the tool using which you can manage installed devpaks. There are two possible ways how to run PackMan. The easy way is to run Dev-C++ and choose from menu Tools\Package Manager :
You can also directly run Packman.exe in your Dev-C++ directory. After the PackMan loads, you should see something like this:
You can see list of installed devpaks as icons. If you select some devpak, you can see on the left side of the window some information about selected devpak. If you don't see the Package Details part of the window, press Ctrl-D or use menu View\Details. The Package Details window has two tabs, General and Files. If you select the Files tab you will see list of files, which belongs to the selected devpak. You can also verify devpak's integrity or uninstall devpak using appropriate toolbar buttons or menu entries. Use of the Install button is described in the next section.
So, where can you get the devpaks? One method is to use Dev-C++'s component called WebUpdate. The next section describes how to use this tool. You can also create your own devpak (this is described later) or download devpak as a file from Internet, e.g. from http://devpaks.org/. On the bottom of Devpaks.org you can find in the section 'Other sites with devpaks' list of links to other devpak sites. If the Dev-C++ installation ran correctly, you should be able to install the devpak by simple double clicking on the file in the Windows Explorer. You can also use PackMan (see above) by using the PackMan's Install button or menu Package\Install Package.
Note: One devpak may depend on another and it won't install until you install the devpaks on which is dependant. Also note that there is currently bug in the dependency checking.
WebUpdate is part of Dev-C++, which you can use to download and install devpaks on-line from several devpak repositories. You can open WebUpdate tool from Dev-C++ by using menu Tools\Check for Updates/Packages :
The WebUpdate window should open:
In the Select devpak server combobox you can choose from servers which are hosting devpaks.
Note: The servers contain different content.
Currently are available two servers -- Dev-C++ primary devpak server which is maintained by Dev-C++ authors and Devpaks.org for community devpaks. The Dev-C++ primary devpak server will always contain latest versions of Dev-C++, PackMan, PackMaker and translations of Dev-C++. However, other devpaks (of normal libraries, like e.g. Allegro) on this server are sometimes a little bit outdated and you may find newer version on the devpaks.org server or on the net.
The devpaks.org contains list of devpaks created by Dev-C++ community. After you select server, click on the Check for updates button to download list of devpaks, which are available on the selected server. Dev-C++ tries to detect versions of already installed devpaks and to offer you only the not installed versions of devpaks, showing the version of the installed devpak in the Installed column:
Note: If installing new version of some devpak, the old one is automatically uninstalled.
Now you can select the devpaks you want to install simply by checking the checkbox next to the devpak's name.
By default you see all devpaks available on the server. But the devpaks are categorized to several groups, so you can choose to show only devpaks from particular group by using the Groups combobox.
After you select the devpaks, you can download them and install by clicking on the Download selected button.
Warning: Do not change the server after clicking on the 'Check for updates' button.
Tutorial: See the tutorial animation which shows how to download and install devpak from webupdate.
The downloaded devpaks are stored in Packages subdirectory of your Dev-C++ directory, so if you uninstall the devpak and then you want to install it again you have not to download the devpak again. This is also useful if you want to download the devpak using WebUpdate but you want not to install it. In this case, after downloading the devpak cancel the start of installation and you will find the devpak in this directory.
Warning: Do not install devpaks from untrusted sources! There are currently some issues with security of devpaks. If you want more information, you can find them here.
See the section about exploring devpaks manually if you want to know how to explore content of the devpak before installing it.
You can also upgrade the MinGW (or downgrade) if it was installed as a part of Dev-C++ (i.e. the Dev-C++ with MinGW variant of installation). The MinGW consists of these devpaks: binutils, gcc-core, gcc-g++, GNU Debugger, GNU Make, MinGW runtime, Windows32 API and optionally gnu-objc (you need this only if you want to develop Objective C programs, but remember that Dev-C++ does not have any support for Objective C). If you want to upgrade MinGW run WebUpdate, select Devpaks.org server and than 'Dev-C++ MinGW system' group. Than select latest versions (if not already installed) of the MinGW packages (listed above) and install them.
Tutorial: You can see this upgrade procedure in a tutorial.
Warning: Some C++ devpaks depend on version of MinGW. If you will upgrade MinGW some C++ devpaks may not work.
Maybe you are porting some program written originally for Borland C++ or maybe you just want to use colors in console program and you are looking for library which implements Borland CONIO library (if you don't know what this library does you can find small introduction here). Actually there are several CONIO implementations for MinGW. One of them you can download using WebUpdate for Dev-C++. The devpak is located at Devpaks.org server in the Text console group:
As you can see, the library is there in two versions. Use the version 1.0 only if you want behavior exactly same as was in CONIO distributed with Dev-C++ 4.9.8.0. Normally install the 2.0 version.
Note: There are several differences between this CONIO and the Borland one.
The biggest change is to include conio2.h instead of conio.h. This is because conio.h is part of MinGW, which declares non-Borland specific functions (e.g. getchar()). The conio2.h automatically includes conio.h. Also don't forget to link you program against libconio.a which you can do by using menu Project\Project Options\Parameters tab and in the Linker textbox add -lconio:
Tutorial: You can see tutorial how to install and use CONIO.
You'll find links to documentation and homepage in your Start menu in the Programs\Bloodshed Dev-C++\CONIO folder.
You may want to know content of the devpak before installing it. Or you may want to install the devpak without using Dev-C++ (most devpaks will work with any MinGW installation). In these cases you can simply rename the file from something.devpak to something.tar.bz2 and open it with an archiver (e.g. 7-zip). You will see one file with some meta information (name, version, author etc.), which will have .DevPackage extension and a directory (or several directories). If you want to manually install the devpak without using PackMan, simply unpack the contents of the directory to your MinGW directory tree. (See the .DevPackage file for information where to unpack them, format of this file is described here. See description about [Files] section.)
| CONIO |
| development package see also devpak |
| devpak |
| Package Manager see also PackMan |
| PackMan |
| WebUpdate |
| WebUpdate |
Go to the corresponding paragraph.
This paragraph is obsolete.