Last updated 10 July 2020
This page provides general information about installing Embed Inc software.
Be sure to read the legal notice before using any software found on this web site.
Software releases on this web site are provided as self-extracting executable files. The files are named INSTALL_xxx.EXE, where XXX is a name for the specific software release. When run, these files will extract themselves into a temporary directory to create an Embed Inc software release directory, then automatically run the installation program from that directory. You will be prompted where the software is to be installed before any changes are made to your system. You can abort the software installation process at the first prompt by closing the window with the prompts. In that case, the temporary software release directory will be deleted and no net change will have been made to your system.
To install the software, follow the directions as prompted by the installation program. The temporary software release directory will be deleted when the installation procedure completes.
The following operating systems are supported:
Multiple Embed Inc software releases can be installed together, and must be installed to the same directory if the combined features are to be available. The installation program will notify you if a previous Embed Inc software installation is found, and set the default installation directory so that the new release is merged into the existing installed Embed Inc software. The default software installation directory will be c:\embedinc if no previous installation was found.
If you install multiple software releases, install them in order according their release dates as shown on the page you downloaded them from. Install old releases first.
If installing multiple software releases together, be sure to reboot if directed after installing the first one. A software release is not fully installed until the machine is rebooted if this was requested by the installation program. Subsequent releases may not install correctly until the first one is fully installed, including the required reboot. Additional releases can then be installed without rebooting between each one, although the machine must be rebooted to complete the combined installation if a reboot was requested by any of the additional installations.
All Embed Inc software has a common structure after installation. This section describes the different top level directories within the software installation directory. Only some of these directories may exist in any one software release. For example, if a software release contains no source code, then it will not contain a SOURCE directory.
The default software installation directory is c:\embedinc. The directories described here are found directly within this installation directory. For example, the full path to the COM directory will be c:\embedinc\com if the software was installed to the default location.
The top level directories within a software installation directory are:
Commands (executables). These include directly executable programs (.exe files), Windows CMD shell scripts (.bat files), and Embed scripts (.escr files). This directory is added to the command search path by the installation procedure. Most of the programs are intended to be run from a command line.
Documentation files. Documentation files are plain text or HTML files, and there is one documentation file here for each program in the COM directory. There are also additional documentation files that are not specific to particular programs.
The DOC command, if present, will look for a documentation file in this directory or a script file in the COM directory and display it.
It can be useful to look thru the DOC directory and script files in the COM directory after installing a software release.
Environment files. These are used implicitly by many programs and you generally shouldn't mess with them. This includes message files (.msg) that contain the text of error and other messages.
This directory contains sub-directories with the same names as programs in the COM directory. Each such sub-directory contains example files that are related to that program. Many programs don't have example files, and will therefore not have a sub-directory here. You can safely modify anything in the EXAMPLES directory without effecting the behaviour of any programs.
References to external (non-Embed) resources. This is how Embed software and scripts find external tools, like compilers and linkers. The state in this directory is generally set up by the embed_extool program. See Building Embed Software for details.
Vector font files used by graphics programs.
Linkable libraries and their associated include files. Embed software releases only include minimal libraries here, since these are not required to just use Embed software.
To develop software using Embed libraries, clone the latest source code from GitHub, then build all the libraries locally. See Building Embed Software for details.
Like the EXAMPLES directory, this contains sub-directories with the same names as programs in the COM directory. This is where additional files required for a program's operation go.
Source code, which is defined as those files used to produce software that are directly modified by a human, usually with a text editor. This directory contains only subdirectories, which contain the actual source code files.
Embed software releases no longer contain source code directly. Source code is available via publicly readable repositories on GitHub. See Building Embed Software for details.
There is one directory here for each directory in SOURCE. These directories contain the files derived from the raw source code in SOURCE. All builds are run in these directories. The SOURCE directory contains the pure source code, and everything else gets created here. If everything is set up correctly, you should be able to delete all files in a SRC sub-directory and recreate them solely from the source code in the SOURCE directories.