BUILD.rst

Table of Content

1. Setting up the software stack
   1. On Windows
   2. On macOS
   3. On Linux
2. Getting started
   1. Visual Studio 2019 (or 2017): using the built-in CMake support
   2. Using CMake for other setups

Setting up the software stack

Note

If you are using the university workstations in Uranus or Elgkalv, you can skip to `Visual Studio 2019 (or 2017)`_ as those computers already come with Visual Studio 2019 and Git installed.

On Windows

We recommend using Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2022; the Community edition is free to download and is meant for students (among others). When installing it, make sure to check the Desktop development with C++ workload (in the Workloads tab, under the Desktop & Mobile group) and to at least have enabled the individual components found in the figure below.

You will also need to install Git; you can leave all options to their default values during the installation.

In case you decided not to use Visual Studio 2019 (nor 2017), you will additionally need to install CMake.

Excerpt from the component selection screen of Visual Studio 2019; the required components have their checkbox ticked.

On macOS

We recommend using Apple’s Xcode, which can be installed from the Mac App Store, but you are free to use other tools though the instructions provided here might not be sufficient or applicable as a result. Once the installation is done, you will need to run in a terminal xcode-select --install to get the command line tools installed.

You will additionally need to install CMake.

Once you open the project file in Xcode, switch Scheme to EDAF80_Assignment1, under the Product directory.

On Linux

You are free to use whichever compiler you want (the code has been tested on both Clang and GCC) as long as it supports C++14. In addition to a C++14-capable compiler, you will need to install CMake and Git; prefer the versions shipped by your distribution, as long as CMake 3.13 is available.

Getting started

Note

All the files and folders are specified relative to the root folder (the folder containing among others this file, “README.rst”, the “src/” and “shaders/” folder), unless specified otherwise.

We will present two different approaches for setting up the assignment code: you only need to follow one of them. If you are using Visual Studio 2019 (or 2017), both approaches are valid but the first one is recommended.

Visual Studio 2019 (or 2017): using the built-in CMake support

Here is a quick overview of the different steps to be performed:

1. (Ignore if you are using your own computer) Create a directory called “Program” under your home folder (see the image below). You need to use the path to that folder in step 3, in order to be able to compile and run the assignments on the lab computers.

   

   How to access your home folder.

2. Open Visual Studio 2019 and click on the “Clone or check out code” from the “Get started” window, or via the menu “File > Clone Repository…”.

3. Enter the URL of this GitHub repository, https://github.com/LUGGPublic/CG_Labs, as well as the folder path you created in step 1 (or the folder of your choice if using your own computer).

4. Wait until you see the message “CMake generation finished.” in the “Output” tab of the bottom panel. At that point, all the dependencies have been downloaded and compiled, and you are ready to build and work on the assignments.

5. Select which assignment should be run when you press F5, by choosing the “src\EDAF80\EDAF80_Assignment1.exe” option (see the figure below).

   

   Select which assignment you would like to run; make sure you do not select the ones that say “(Install)” like the one above or below the entry pointed by the red arrow.

6. Build the source code and run the first assignment: you should be greeted by a window looking like the image below.

   In case you do not get a window or its content looks different, look at the output from the program which you can see in the same “Output” tab as used in step 4, though you should change from the “CMake” output to the “Debug” one; this logs can also be found in “out/<CONFIG>/src/EDAF80/logs.txt” (replace <CONFIG> by “x64-Debug” or “x64-Release” depending on the current building configuration you are using in Visual Studio).

   

   The first assignment running when launched for the first time.

Using CMake for other setups

Here, you will use CMake directly to generate the project files. We will demonstrate how to do it using the CMake GUI, but you can also use CMake from the command line to achieve the same results.

1. Download, or clone, the framework from the GitHub repository at https://github.com/LUGGPublic/CG_Labs; the resulting folder will be later referred to as “code”, but you are free to use whatever name you want.

2. In the folder containing “code”, create a new folder named “build” that will contain all the binaries and object files.

3. Let us generate the project or build files specific to your setup. This can either be done via the command line or via a GUI; both will be presented.

   If you are using the command line, run cmake -G <GENERATOR> -S “code” -B <BUILD> where “<BUILD>” refers to the build folder create in step 2, and “<GENERATOR>” is one of the generators supported by CMake, such as “Xcode”, “Unix Makefiles”, “Ninja”; the full list of supported generators can be found at cmake-generators(7).

   If you prefer to use the GUI, follow these steps instead:

   1. Launch the CMake GUI tool, and fill in the paths to the source and binary folders.
   2. Now press the “Configure” button (found towards the bottom of the GUI), and select the generator you want to use: for example, “Visual Studio 2019” on Windows, “Xcode” on macOS, “Ninja” or “Unix Makefile” on Linux.
   3. Once the configuration is done, CMake variables and their values will appear above the previously mentioned “Configure” button, highlighted in red meaning their value changed since the last configuration. If you wish to change the window resolution, or some other variables, go ahead and do it. Either way, press the “Configure” button once more to remove the highlighting from all variables, and then press the “Generate” button to its right, to generate the project files; you will find them in the “build” folder you specified.

4. Build the source code using your IDE, or via the command line by running cmake --build <BUILD> where “<BUILD>” is the path to your build folder.

5. If you are using an IDE like Visual Studio or Xcode, you should change which assignments is started when running the project:

   Visual Studio

   Right click on the “EDAF80_Assignment1” project in the “Solution Explorer” tab (usually in the left panel) and select the “Select as StartUp Project” menu item.

   Xcode

   In the top left corner of the centre part of the window, there should be a field saying something like “ALL_BUILD > My Mac”. Click on it to get a dropdown of all the existing targets, and simply click on “EDAF80_Assignment1” from it.

6. Run the first assignment: you should be greeted by a window looking like the figure below.

   In case you do not get a window or its content looks different, look at the logs which you can find in “<BUILD>/src/EDAF80/logs.txt” (replace <BUILD> by the path to your build folder); if you manually started the assignment from the command line, the file will be found in the current working directory.

   

   The first assignment running when launched for the first time.