MQForge

MetaQuotes Forge beta v0.0.2

A tool for making compiling MetaQuotes files from the commandline using the MetaQuotes compiler Meta Editor easier!

MQForge is designed for use with MQ4 code (should probably work with MQ5 too, but untested). It does not replace Meta Editor as compiler, it simply extends its functionality to make it easier to compile .mq4 files from the commandline.

Features

• better error messages output directly in your terminal:

  

• simplicity:

   # instead of
   /path/to/metaeditor.exe /compile:"file.mq4" /log:errors.log
  
   # simply run
   MQForge
  
   # or
   MQForge -me /path/to/metaeditor.exe
   # if you don't have a config file setup.

• easy multifile compilation

  If you use #import instead of #include, MQForge simplifies compiling all these files by establishing a dependency tree before compiling in order.

Internals

MQForge follows these rough steps when performing a compile:

• read all files recursively in current directory
• establish dependency tree (warn/stop if dependencies not found)
• compile all files in the correct sequence using metaeditor.exe
• print all warnings, errors, etc to the commandline (instead of inside a .log file)

Usage

Setting up and using MQForge is pretty simple.

To get a binary, head over to the Releases page and grab the .zip relevant to your platform and extract it. It should contain a single binary, which is all you need.

Once you have your binary, if you won't be using a forge_commands.json file, you simply invoke it in the directory where your files are with the path to your metaeditor.exe file, like so:

MQForge -me /path/to/metaeditor.exe

If you want to run MQForge in a specific directory, pass it a filepath as its first argument like so:

MQForge /path/to/project -me /path/to/metaeditor.exe

Further functionality does exist, and it can be seen through the help file, which is invoked with the --help flag, which is also shown here:

Helpfile

MQForge

OPTIONAL:
[<filepath>]

REQUIRED:
[-me/--meta-editor]       -   Location for your metaeditor.exe file.

OPTIONAL:
[-h/--help]               -   print this helpfile
[-v/--version]            -   print program version
[-dh/--default-headers]   -   Location directory of standard .mqh header files (this is usually something like 'C:/users/USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/MetaQuotes/Terminal/USERID/MQL4/Include/').
[-wine/--use-wine]        -   (default: false) Whether to use Wine to run 'metaeditor.exe' - only available on Linux.
[-clr/--colourful]        -   (default: true) Whether to provide a coloured output.
[-se/--suppress-errors]   -   (default: false) Whether to suppress launch errors for metaeditor.exe (really only matters with Wine).
[-path/--use-path]        -   (default: true) Whether to search your PATH for .ex4, .dll, and .mqh files.
[-s/--alt-settings]       -   Alternate settings file as opposed to the default 'forge_commands.json' file.

Boolean flags can be specified either by just passing the flag like this:

MQForge --use-wine

or, if you want a specific non-default value (like false), you can pass it like this:

MQForge --use-wine false

if you want to make compiling easier if you're going to be compiling over and over, you can define a forge_commands.json file in the root of your project (an example titled forge_commands_example.json is in the root of this project). This file gives you all the same options that the flags do; here is an example file with the default values:

{
	"meta_editor" : "/path/to/metaeditor.exe",
	"default_header_location" : "path/to/MQL4/Include/",
	"use_wine" : false,
	"compiler_colours" : true,
	"suppress_errors" : false,
	"use_path" : true,
	"target" : "*"
}

With this file it makes it even easier. You can just run MQForge like this in your project directory:

MQForge

The only additional parameter of note is target in forge_commands.json, which does not have a corresponding compile flag. This can either be a string "*" representing that you want all files compiled or you can provide an array of strings of the files that you want.

The target parameter will spider out and find dependencies of the file you are compiling, so you do not need to specify them all in the array.

Building

Currently MQForge is only setup for building with Linux, however, you can still build on Windows with WSL.

The main reason for this is that building relies on Bash and GNU C extensions in the codebase. This means that generally you'll want to use the mingw version of gcc to compile as opposed to msvc. I used to use CMake, but I just vastly prefer writing my compiliation scripts in C.

# clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/Ash-Olorenshaw/MQForge.git

# cd into dir
cd MQForge

If you are using a Posix shell (Bash, Dash, Zsh, etc) then just do the following

# make script executable
chmod +x ./compile.c

# run
./compile.c [COMPILER]

There are also two optional flags that can be passed to ./compile.c: run and debug.

If you aren't using a Posix compliant shell (Pwsh, Fish, NuShell) you can either do:

bash ./runbench.c [COMPILER]

Or the following:

# gcc is not necessary, just for example
# compile
gcc ./build_scripts/utils.c ./build_scripts/args.c -o ./compile

# make executable
chmod +x ./compile

# run
./compile [COMPILER]

After these steps, you should either have a MQForge or MQForge.exe file in the build directory for your use!

Credits

cJSON - used for JSON parsing, an excellent library!