The Introjucer

The Introjucer is a little baby IDE which allows you to easily make JUCE projects. Rather than bother with having to make separate projects for the various platforms we wish to use, we can let it do all the hard work. All we need to do is create an Audio Plug-In project in The Introjucer. This will allow us to edit all the code we need to, then export it to a project for the specific platform we wish to use.

Before we can actually start using The Introjucer we need to build it from the source. This might sound scary if you have never compiled any code before but the JUCE library is all set up to make it super easy.

Remember the folder we downloaded which contained the JUCE library. Let's look in there now. If you navigate into 'JUCE/extras/Introjucer/Builds' you should find a set of folders containing projects for several different platforms and IDEs.

Windows:

On Windows all you will need to do is open the Visual Studio Project file for the version of Visual Studio you have. Then just hit F7 and let it chug away for a bit. If F7 doesn't work use the 'Build Solution' option in the Build menu. Again this should hopefully build with no errors. When it is done there should be a new folder, called 'Debug', in the same folder as the Visual Studio project. In there will be 'Introjucer.exe'.

Mac:

I am probably not the best equipped to instruct people in programming using XCode. But I can open a project file and build it (no applause necessary). All you need to do to build The Introjucer is open the XCode project file and hit ⌘ B. Again, hopefully everything should build with no errors. When it is done you should have a folder called 'build' in the same folder as the project file. In here you can navigate to 'build/Debug', in which you should find an executable called 'Introjucer'.

Linux:

You will notice if you look in the Linux folder all there is is a text file called "Makefile". This may seem fairly unassuming little file but if you open it in a text editor you might wee yourself a little. Going into what this file actually does would take a long time and is far beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice to say it allows us to use the Make utility to build The Introjucer application.

To do this we need to open a terminal and change directory to the directory that the Makefile is in. Assuming you put the JUCE folder in '/home/JUCE' you can do this by typing the following in the terminal prompt and hitting return.

cd /home/JUCE/extras/Introjucer/Builds/Linux

We can then run Make by typing the following in the terminal prompt and hitting return.

make

Let it do its stuff and hopefully it should finish building without any errors. When it is all done there should be another folder in the same folder as the Makefile called 'build'. In there you should find an executable file called 'Introjucer'.

Congratulations You Have Just Build The Introjucer!

If everything went well you should now have an executable for The Introjucer. If you ran into problems you may well need to consult Google / the JUCE forums. 

When you first launch The Introjucer you will be asked where you want to store the JUCE modules. Just point it at wherever you saved the JUCE library.

Now we are ready to actually do some stuff with audio plug-ins!

Have a nice day now!

Sean

P.S. Some of you may be wondering why I have got you to make the debug build of The Introjucer, or maybe you won't. I'd be interested to know if any Introjucer users out the actually bother with the release build. In my humble opinion, there is very little point. All that extra effort to select the release target in whatever IDE or, even worse, having to type an extra 14 characters when using make. That's bit too much!