The command-line and GUI applications are written in C#, targeted to .NET Core 6. The .NET runtime is available for download from Microsoft for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It's even available for the Raspberry PI.
Not everyone wants to install the .NET runtime on their system, so CiderPress II is available as both "framework-dependent" and "self-contained" downloads. The former is much smaller (by 30+MB), but the latter will work without having the runtime installed. Windows users will likely already have the runtime.
If you want to install the .NET runtime, get it here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download . Click on "all .NET 6.0 downloads" (or whatever version is current), then in the ".NET Runtime" section (or, for Windows, ".NET Desktop Runtime" section), download the appropriate item from the Installers column. You can also download a more complete package, such as the SDK or the ASP.NET Core Runtime, but they're larger and have things you won't need if you just want to run CiderPress II. The downloads in the Binaries column will give you a "dotnet" executable and libraries without an installer, which means you'll have the runtime but may not have it automatically configured in your shell path.
You can pick a file to download from the Releases page, or use one of these links to download a recent stable release:
Once downloaded, unzip the file somewhere convenient (Safari on the Mac will do the unzip for you). There is no installer; the commands are executed directly from where they are unzipped. On some systems an additional step may be necessary. You will need a command-line shell to run "cp2":
- Windows: hit Windows+R to open the "run" window. Enter "cmd" for a classic DOS shell or "powershell" for something fancier, and hit return.
- Linux: use "xterm", "gnome-terminal", or whatever you like.
- Mac OS: from the Finder, in the Go menu, select Utilities. Double-click Terminal to launch it.
In the shell, change to the directory where the files were unzipped. Then:
- Windows: run
./cp2 versionto confirm it works. You will probably need to click through some security warnings. If you're only interested in the GUI version, just double-clickCiderPress2.exe. - Linux: the command should have been made executable when unzipped; if not, use
chmod +x cp2to fix it. Run./cp2 versionto confirm it works. - Mac OS: the command should have been made executable when unzipped; if not, use
chmod +x cp2to make it executable. The system adds a "quarantine" flag to anything downloaded from the Internet, so you need to do an extra step before you can execute the program. In the directory where the files were unpacked, runxattr -d com.apple.quarantine *. Run./cp2 versionto confirm this was successful.
The commands are:
cp2: command-line interfaceCiderPress2: desktop graphical interface (Windows builds only)
The download includes the manual for cp2, Manual-cp2.md, formatted for 80 columns for ease
of viewing in a terminal window. The file is in "Markdown" format, which is perfectly readable
as a plain text file. The manual for the GUI, and tutorials for both applications, can
be found on the web site.
The CiderPress II command-line utility was developed on x64 CPUs with:
- Windows 10 (build 19044)
- macOS 11.6.3 "Big Sur"
- Linux Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS
Compatibility is determined mostly by the .NET runtime, so more recent versions of the operating systems are expected to work. Older versions of the operating systems may or may not work. For example, the CLI application has been successfully run on Windows 7 32-bit (x86), but this will not be tested regularly.
The code is targeted to .NET Core 6, and is expected to work on newer versions of the runtime.
The contents of the framework-dependent download packages for different systems are almost entirely identical. The application itself is compiled to platform-agnostic bytecode. Each platform has a system-specific "cp2" executable that gets the runtime up and pointed in the right direction. The only significant difference is between 32-bit code and 64-bit code; you cannot run a 64-bit package on a 32-bit runtime.
If you want to run the command-line app on a platform that doesn't have a system-specific
binary on the Releases page, you need to install the .NET runtime for your system, and then
download one of the framework-dependent packages (e.g. win-x86_fd or win-x64_fd depending
on whether your target is 32-bit or 64-bit, respectively). You can then run the program with
dotnet cp2.dll <args>. For convenience, you can wrap that up in a shell script, like this:
#!/bin/sh
exec PATH/TO/dotnet PATH/TO/cp2.dll $@
It's possible to run the GUI application under Linux using the Wine compatibility layer. However, with Wine v8.0.2 on Ubuntu 20.04, it was not difficult to make the application crash.
If you want to try it, download the 32-bit (x86) self-contained package for Windows. On my
system, the 64-bit version hangs during startup (for both GUI and CLI), and the framework-dependent
package requires downloading additional Wine components, so win-x86_sc is your best bet.
(I am not a Wine expert. It's possible I'm doing it wrong.)