[Bf-committers] Status report

[Maarten Gribnau]

Hi Ton,

I have been working on the OSX and win32 targets. 

OSX:
I haven't tried the automake stuff Kent is working on but the original Makefiles
build a working creator publisher and game player with fmod and ode. This is
provided you have a OSX 10.2 system and follow the instructions in the
readme.txt which instruct you to install external libraries using fink. They are
not in the lib tree but I don't think that's a problem. I am planning to commit
the non-fink libraries fmod, ode and python (Python is in fink but depends on
X11 which is a huge install) in the lib/darwin tree. The frozen Python (VRML2
import) is not working and the build process is cumbersome, see below.

WIN32:
The Win32 project files are almost finished. There is a new project file that
builds all the stuff in intern in one pass, including the frozen Python stuff
which is still not working, see below. The main Blender creator project file
also builds a working Blender creator, publisher and player. Ode is not build
automatically at the moment, see my remark below.

FROZEN PYTHON:
The real problem is the frozen Python stuff. To create the frozen Python files
people need to install Python and fiddle with the installation to get the freeze
process right. This is not a straightforward process.
My proposal is to commit the source files that are the output of the freeze
process into the source tree and remove a build step from the Makefile and the
MSVC project files. 
The downside of this is that people working on the frozen Python stuff need to
run freeze by hand need to commit source files if they make changes in the
intern tree. I don't think that that is a problem though because:
1. Committing by hand is standard procedure if you work on an intern library.
2. Committing the source is not a problem if we bring back the procedure of
comitting the libs that are build from the intern tree in the lib tree like we
used to in the NaN days (do I need to explain the advantages of this?). Then the
procedures are the same.

Currently, the frozen Python is not working. It's alsmost there. Most of the
code  is working, VRML2 files are parsed but the connection with Blender is not
there. The scripts want to access Blender to add meshes and materials but can
not find the modules. I am stuck there and hope that Zr or Strubi can help out.

ODE:
I think we should move the ode sources out of the blender source tree (into
extern/ode or something) and commit the built libraries into the lib tree for
every platform. This saves developers another few steps in getting the
configuration of ode right.

greetz, Maarten

Quoting Ton Roosendaal <ton@blender.org>:

> Hi all,
> 
> Can you give me feedback on the status of the current release? Meaning, 
> how far are from the target, getting a cross-platform out-of-the-box 
> compiling Blender, according the briefing sent out before?
> 
> Windows?
> Linux?
> OSX?
> FreeBSD?
> Sun?
> SGI?
> 
> It's time to put a deadline on this, to prepare moving to the next 
> stage. We can then provide a new source release, with instructions:
> 
> - how to load the sources (cvs, tarbal)
> - downloading the lib/ stuff or not
> - how to set up the compiling environment
> 
> Can we achieve this goal before december 1?
> 
> A few volunteers now are looking at installing the sourceforge code at 
> blender.org. Hopefully they can deliver around that date as well. So we 
> can discuss the next 10 days the strategy how to move on as well.
> 
> But, first things first, what's the status? :-)
> 
> -Ton-
> 
> 
> _____________________________________________________
> Ton Roosendaal | ton@blender.org | Blender Foundation
> Amsterdam | The Netherlands |  http://www.blender.org
> 
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> 


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