[Bf-cycles] Cycles standalone repository

[Sergey Sharybin]

Hi,

Last few evenings i've been working on making a dedicated repository for
Cycles renderer and at this point it seems to be ready for public access
now, even though some more work is required.

= Motivation =

Main motivation of creating standalone repository for Cycles is to simplify
access for new developers who wants to hack into Cycles code but don't want
to bother cloning the whole Blender repository and setting up environment
for blender compilation.

It was kind of possible to only compile Cycles from Blender repository as
well, but that process was really tedious.

= What repository contains =

Repository contains the full history of Cycles, starting from the original
commit to the Blender SVN. This means it's possible to track down every
change in the sources. The only thing here is that it's not possible to
compile old sources. This is because build system for standalone repository
was added just now and trying to put it somewhere in the past was rather
tricky.

Sources are mainly a direct dump from Blender, so it shouldn't be difficult
to keep Cycles in Blender and standalone repositories in sync. There are a
bit of changes to build system which we'll need to backport to blender
(namely CMake variables name convention).

Repository contains README file which describes how to compile Cycles.
Compilation is so called "works for me", so more tweaks are likely needed
before compilation becomes flawless for everyone.

*NOTE*: Windows is not supported atm! It's because of some dependencies
which are not so clear to get. Mainly OpenGL, GLUT and GLEW. Don't worry,
we will support Windows eventually, we just need to start from something!

The repository also contains folder with .xml examples, so it's really easy
to test render engine just after compilation.

= Build system =

Currently CMake is used as a build system, and likely it'll be it,

= Where the repository is =

It is on our server, read-only access is

  git clone git://git.blender.org/cycles.git

for write access (needs SSH key and you need to be a developer of the
project)

  git clone git at git.blender.org:cycles.git

To browse repository online please visit:

  https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/C/

= Authors =

The repository contains the file with everyone who contributed to Cycles.
This is somewhat common for all open source projects to have such a file.

Currently this file contains authors of commits, so if someone submitted
patch which was committed by someone else please let me know -- that'd be
easier than reading all the commit messages searching for such information.

= Synchronization with Blender =

Ideally we'll need to have some automated way to sync changes between
Blender and Cycles, but it is not done yet. Exact way how to keep things in
sync i'll publish later.

For now we can do manual synchronization, which is not THAT bad.

= Known TODOs =

- Windows build is not supported at this moment.
- Logging option is exposed as an option but wouldn't work now.
- Installation target is not tested and would need more work.
- Compiled .oso files are not put to the final location, so manual copy is
required for now.
- Set up mailing list for commits (if we need one?)

I'm pretty much sure i forgot to put some information in this email which i
wanted, but the mail becomes too long already, so i'd rather wrap up now
and answer the questions as they arrive.

-- 
With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
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