[Bf-committers] Blender building software

[Campbell Barton]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Bjørnar Frøyse <bjornar24 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I had some trouble setting it up on Windows, even after reading the guide
> several times over.
> I am not a software developer per se, but I am familiar with many aspects
> of the process.
> Compiling my own source was a completely new experience.
>
> My main misunderstanding was that I did not get/understand the relationship
> between Cmake and VS.
> I did not know that I had to generate a solution using Cmake (I had no idea
> what Cmake was,
> and the info on their site was, understandably, geared towards people who
> already know what it is).
>
> This might fall under programming 101, and might not be something that you
> should need
> to cover on the wiki. (It might even work as a filter for people who are in
> over their head.)
>
> Right now, there's so much info on the page (refering to the Windows page
> here:
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender/Windows/msvc/CMake
> )
> that it's hard to make out what part is the important one to get started,
> at least for
> someone new to compiling in general.
>
> Having the default standard build process highlighted and defined in a few
> numbered steps
> would have been a much clearer starting point for me.
>
> That's my two cents on the matter.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 10:35 PM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Even if this is from lack of experience, Id be curious to know
>> specifics about which steps in the docs newer devs trip-up on, it may
>> be the docs can be improved to avoid others running into similar
>> errors.
>>
>> --
>> - Campbell

MSVC docs are very poorly maintained, we just don't have many active
devs using Windows as far as I can tell, so these docs lag behind.

Its still referring to MSVC2008 and MinGW on this page... why?

Even so, I don't think you should have to understand exactly whats
going on between (cmake/msvc/nvcc... etc) just to get a working build.
With well written instructions you should be able to follow them and
build Blender without too much trouble.