Columns UI is released under the Lesser GNU Public Licence (see COPYING and COPYING.LESSER).

Releases can be downloaded from the Columns UI home page.

The latest development version can be downloaded by clicking on the Azure Pipelines link above, and then Artifacts. Development versions may be buggier than formal releases; if you encounter problems, please 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 2019 is required to build Columns UI. You can use the free community edition (select the Desktop development with C++ workload during installation).

The following libraries are required to build Columns UI:

• Microsoft Guideline Support Library (GSL)
• Microsoft Windows Implementation Library (WIL)
• range-v3

The recommended way to install them is using vcpkg.

You can set up vcpkg, and install Microsoft GSL, using the following commands (run outside of the Columns UI source tree):

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
.\vcpkg integrate install
.\vcpkg install ms-gsl wil range-v3 --overlay-ports=..\columns_ui\ports

(Note: Change the ..\columns_ui\ports path in the .\vcpkg install command as necessary.)

Open vc16/columns_ui-public.sln in Visual Studio 2019.

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 vc16\Release.

You can use MSBuild if you prefer. In a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2019 (in the start menu), run:

msbuild /m /p:Platform=Win32 /p:Configuration=Release vc16\columns_ui-public.sln

If the build is successful, foo_ui_columns.dll will be output in vc16\Release.

For a clean build, run:

msbuild /m /p:Platform=Win32 /p:Configuration=Release /t:Rebuild vc16\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 2019 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 2019 from the start menu, switch to the Columns UI source directory and run:

msbuild /m /p:PlatformToolset=ClangCL;UseLldLink=True;VcpkgAutoLink=False;WholeProgramOptimization=False;Platform=Win32;Configuration=Release /t:Rebuild vc16\columns_ui-public.sln