Hi

I'm new to Pure Data an using it to prototype ideas/algorithms. A visual programming language definitely helps me see more clearly what the various datatypes and structure are doing to data.

I would like to use Pure Data further and create a standalone applications for my work e.g. create a .exe or .dmg file? I believe this sort of question has been asked since 2009 so forgive me for asking again. The reason for asking is that some clients are not very computer savvy and would prefer a clickable standalone app.

Are there any developments to make this possible?

Thanks

Marc

pd extended offered this functionality as a built in feature from what I hear. Unfortunately, pd-extended is a bit dated and no longer maintained... that said, if your patch does not require features from the latest releases of puredata, you could build it in extended and use it's make-app function. If that won't work for you, then making a standalone app from a puredata patch is still possible, but not exactly a simple task. There are actually several ways that you could do this, all of which will likely require some knowledge of coding in other languages like C, java, python etc. If you were looking to make something for mobile devices, there are apps available that can wrap your patch to run in it's own app container type of thing in android and ios. For that, check out pddroidparty, libpd and mobmuplat. If you want to run a patch as a vst type plugin within a DAW, check out pdpulp, chamomile and the one that is i think windows only, pdvst.

If your only need to make a standalone app is to cater to people who are less computer savvy, then I would say that the amount of effort it would take to make a truly standalone app from a pd patch is probably overkill and then some. You could much more easily make a patch that functions somewhat like a standalone app, in that you click an icon and the patch opens up and runs, by creating a launch script. How you would go about doing this would depend on what OS you are using. OSX and linux both run on unix, so a bash script that launches pd and opens the patch with all the desired settings could be written, marked executable (sudo chmod +x <filename>) and assigned an icon. A script could even be made to automate the installation of puredata to go with it.

If you want to be really thorough, you could compile/build a version of puredata from source, making sure all the needed dependencies are contained within the source directory and linked accordingly, and house it in a bundled folder (something like all applications and .kext files on OSX operate,) But once again, this would have some caveats, has it's own learning curve and is generally no simple task for someone who isn't already well versed in these types of things. The easiest thing would probably be to just install pd for your clients manually or via script and make a launch script that they can just click on and have it automatically open pd and the patch of choice.

Hope that helps

@marcorexo Depending on the complexity of the patch, you can maybe use libpd. I did an experiment a long time ago using a UI library: http://www.workinprogress.ca/libpd/ *on linux

Cheers~

Two other things that might be relevant, even though they don't do exactly what you want:

1. Heavy compiler: Compile a PD Vanilla patch to C.
2. MobMuPlat: Run a PD Vanilla patch on a smartphone or tablet, complete with its own custom interface.