Blender CMake build system ============================ Contents --------------- 1. Introduction 2. Obtaining CMake 3. Obtaining Dependencies 4. Deciding on a Build Environment 5. Configuring the build for the first time 6. Configuring the build after SVN updates 7. Specify alternate Python library versions and locations 1. Introduction --------------- This document describes general usage of the new CMake scripts. The inner workings will be described in blender-cmake-dev.txt (TODO). 2. Obtaining CMake ------------------ CMake for can either be downloaded using your favorite package manager or is also available from the CMake website at http://www.cmake.org The website also contains some documentation on CMake usage but I found the man page alone pretty helpful. 3. Obtaining Dependencies ------------------------- Check from the page http://www.blender.org/cms/Getting_Dependencies.135.0.html that you have all dependencies needed for building Blender. Note that for windows many of these dependencies already come in the lib/windows module from SVN. 4. Deciding on a Build Environment ---------------------------------- To build Blender with the CMake scripts you first need to decide which build environment you feel comfortable with. This decision will also be influenced by the platform you are developing on. The current implementation have been successfully used to generate build files for the following environments: 1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. There is a free version available at http://http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2008-editions/express 2. Xcode on Mac OSX 3. Unix Makefiles (On Linux and Mac OSX): CMake actually creates make files which generates nicely color coded output and a percentage progress indicator. 5. Configuring the build for the first time ------------------------------------------- CMake allows one to generate the build project files and binary objects outside the source tree which can be pretty handy in working and experimenting with different Blender configurations (Audio/NoAudio, GameEngine/NoGameEngine etc.) while maintaining a clean source tree. It also makes it possible to generate files for different build systems on the same source tree. This also has benefits for general SVN management for the developer as patches and submit logs are much cleaner. Create a directory outside the blender source tree where you would like to build Blender (from now on called $BLENDERBUILD). On the commandline you can then run the cmake command to generate your initial build files. First just run 'cmake' which will inform you what the available generators are. Thn you can run 'cmake -G generator $BLENDERSOURCE' to generate the build files. Here is an example of all this for Xcode: % mkdir $BLENDERBUILD % cd $BLENDERBUILD % cmake ... ... --version [file] = Show program name/version banner and exit. Generators The following generators are available on this platform: KDevelop3 = Generates KDevelop 3 project files. Unix Makefiles = Generates standard UNIX makefiles. Xcode = Generate XCode project files. % cmake -G Xcode $BLENDERSOURCE ... ... -- Configuring blender -- Configuring blenderplayer -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: $BLENDERBUILD This will generate the build files with default values. Specific features can be enabled or disabled by running the ccmake "GUI" from $BLENDERBUILD as follows: % ccmake $BLENDERSOURCE A number of options appear which can be changed depending on your needs and available dependencies (e.g. setting WITH_OPENEXR to OFF will disable support for OpenEXR). It will also allow you to override default and detected paths (e.g. Python directories) and compile and link flags. When you are satisfied used ccmake to re-configure the build files and exit. It is also possible to use the commandline of 'cmake' to override certain of these settings. 6. Configuring the build after SVN updates ------------------------------------------ The $BLENDERBUILD directory maintains a file called CMakeCache.txt which remembers the initial run's settings for subsequent generation runs. After every SVN update it may be a good idea to rerun the generation before building Blender again. Just rerun the original 'cmake' run to do this, the settings will be remembered. For the example above the following will do after every 'svn up': % cmake -G Xcode $BLENDERSOURCE 7. Specify alternate Python library versions and locations ---------------------------------------------------------- The commandline can be used to override detected/default settings, e.g: On Unix: cmake -D PYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/local/lib/python3.2/config/libpython3.2.so -D PYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/local/include/python3.2 ../blender On Macs: cmake -D PYTHON_INCLUDE_DIRS=/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.2/include/python3.2 -G Xcode ../blender Mote that this should only be needed once per build directory generation because it will keep the overrides in CMakeCache.txt for subsequent runs. To be continued... TODO's ------ 1. Get CMake to create proper distribution directories for the various platforms like scons does. 2. Investigate the viability of using CPack to package installs automatically. 3. Refine this document and write detailed developer's document. 4. Make sure all options (ffmpeg, openexr, quicktime) has proper CMake support on the various platforms. /Jacques Beaurain (jbinto)