Columns UI is released under the Lesser GNU Public Licence (see COPYING and COPYING.LESSER).
Stable and pre-release versions can be downloaded from the Columns UI home page.
If you’re logged into GitHub, you can download the latest development version by clicking on the GitHub Actions badge above, and then clicking on the last successful build and scrolling down to the link named 'Component package (release)' at the bottom.
Development versions may be buggier than formal releases; if you encounter a problem, open an issue.
To clone the repo and dependencies, download and install Git, and then run:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/reupen/columns_ui.git
This repo makes use of Git submodules. If you're not familiar with them, check out the guide here.
Visual Studio 2022 and the Windows 11 SDK are required to build Columns UI.
You can use the free community edition of Visual Studio. During installation, select the Desktop development with C++ workload and the Windows 11 SDK from the right-hand side.
Some dependencies are managed using vcpkg and it must be installed to build Columns UI.
You can install and set up vcpkg by running the following commands (in a directory of your choice outside the Columns UI source tree):
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
vcpkg\vcpkg integrate install
Dependencies should then be automatically installed when Columns UI is built.
(You’ll need to occasionally run git pull
in the vcpkg directory to fetch
updated package metatdata.)
Open vc17/columns_ui-public.sln
in Visual Studio 2022.
Select the Release configuration and the Win32 platform, and build the solution.
If the build is successful, foo_ui_columns.dll
will be output in
vc17\release-win32-v143
.
You can use MSBuild if you prefer. In a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 (in the start menu), run:
msbuild /m "/p:Platform=Win32;Configuration=Release" vc17\columns_ui-public.sln
If the build is successful, foo_ui_columns.dll
will be output in
vc17\release-win32-v143
.
For a clean build, run:
msbuild /m "/p:Platform=Win32;Configuration=Release" "/t:Rebuild" vc17\columns_ui-public.sln
Columns UI can be also compiled using the version of Clang distributed with Visual Studio.
(Note that Clang is not installed by default – in the Visual Studio 2022 installer, you will need to select the Clang compiler and the Clang build tools components.)
With these installed, open a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 from the start menu, switch to the Columns UI source directory and run:
msbuild /m "/p:PlatformToolset=ClangCL;LinkToolExe=link.exe;Platform=Win32;Configuration=Release" vc17\columns_ui-public.sln
(Note: Currently lld-link.exe
can't be used due to
missing wildcard support.)