Buildingly - WIP GUI Building Tool

[ChicoGameDev]

Hi,

I've been working hard the last 2 days on making a GUI building tool.

Small video:
https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws ... ly_0.1.mp4

So for the moment it only works on MacOs but it builds Mac and Windows.

It manage the plist modification + icons for MacOs app and give a nice zip for windows. It is done with the Slab.lua library.
(https://github.com/coding-jackalope/Slab/)

Does this create any kind of interest for the community?

Feel free to give feedback I'll be happy to work on it more for a release.

Buldingly icon:



Regards

[ivan]

There is not a lot of interest in this sort of thing, but build automation is super important in my opinion.
Imagine how much easier it would be if Love2D came with built-in distribution tools.
Now, regarding your tool the question is - is it written in pure Lua or does it require external binaries?
If it doesn't require external binaries then I might possibly use it.
I use a small distribution script (that I wrote for building .love files) called love.maker:
https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=86893
love.maker basically zips your folder and spits out a .love file to a destination directory.
Generally speaking you don't need a super sophisticated GUI at all.
You can just use the command line arguments.
I run my build scripts automatically by double clicking a batch file.

[ChicoGameDev]

Hi,

Of course it would be wonderful if Love2D will have his own tools.

So it is not "pure lua" because my build thread is using "os.execute". And to modify the Info.plist file I use the plutil command (Don't know if it is MacOS native..). And I use an external CLI for changing the .app icon : https://github.com/mklement0/fileicon but no worry this is fully integrated into Buildingly

Yes before I start working on Buildingly I came across your tool. I really like the GUI Idea and I wanted to try out Slab. And as you can see Buildingly go far more deeper than just the .love file.

- Archiving feature
- MacOS fully managed : Icon, plist
- A nice zip for windows and the possibility to keep or not lovec.exe
- And I want to add a list of file to be integrated in the final build (external dependencies)

There is so much to be improved and the fact that there is a GUI will be probably praised by Love2D beginners. The only downside is, if I manage builds on Windows I don't know if I could get a perfect .app for MacOS. That's for sure a question I'll need to answer.

I hope I answered your questions.


Regards.

[ivan]

So it is not "pure lua" because my build thread is using "os.execute".

os.execute is considered "pure lua" although the executed commands may not be cross-platform. You can check the OS from Lua and have alternative commands per platform.
The power behind Lua and Love2D is that it's cross platform as long as your script doesn't require external binaries.

And I use an external CLI for changing the .app icon

Might be possible to overwrite the icon from Lua using io.write. To be honest this is not really that important IMO.

the fact that there is a GUI will be probably praised by Love2D beginners.

I would be surprised if that's true, but you are welcome to try.