Building LuxCoreRender

This page is under construction

This page documents the various processes involved in building LuxCoreRender, starting with version 2.10 “Back-on-track”.

LuxCoreRender's build system has been significantly modified for version 2.10. This document therefore renders obsolete all previous documents related to the compilation of older versions (<=2.9).

For most targets, there are several construction approaches, depending on the use case. This document therefore distinguishes three different construction workflows.

Audience

This document is primarily intended for:

• LuxCoreRender administrators in charge of releasing the various binaries;
• Developers wishing to contribute to the project;
• Package maintainers wishing to integrate all or part of LuxCoreRender into a distribution;

This document assumes that the reader is skilled in the following areas:

• C/C++ compilation
• cmake
• Python Wheels

Familiarity with Conan dependency manager may also make this document easier to understand.

This document is not intended for end-users without any knowledge about application building. Such users are invited to look for already compiled binaries.

Build Targets

LuxCoreRender contains multiple targets, with dependency links:

We aim to make LuxCoreRender available on the following 4 platforms:

• Linux (glibc 2.28+)
• Windows
• MacOS Intel (>=10.15)
• MacOS Arm (>=12.0)

For Python-related targets, we aim to make LuxCoreRender available for all Python versions supported at a given time (https://devguide.python.org/versions/), i.e. 5 versions in general.

Build Workflows

Publisher Workflow

This workflow is designed to be used by LuxCoreRender administrators to publish a new release of one or more LuxCoreRender components. This workflow takes place in a CI/CD Github pipeline.

Dependencies

Expected outputs

The expected output of Dependencies build is a bundled Conan cache populated with binaries built from sources. Please refer to LuxCoreDeps README for more information.

Canonical build

Caveat: depending on your settings, this action can replace an existing release with a fresh one. Be cautious.

To build a new release of Dependencies:

• Go to LuxCoreRender/LuxCoreDeps repository and open Actions menu
• Select LuxCore Dependency Releaser
• Click on Run workflow button, in the upper-right corner
• Choose the branch (should be main), enter the release version, set the options, and click Run workflow

This action will run the build, create a release (or reuse an existing one, depending on your settings) and upload the build artifacts to the release.

Samples

=== Dependency

LuxCore Dependencies

Outputs

The output of this target is a Conan cache populated with binaries

Principles

LuxCore dependencies are built by LuxCoreDeps.

The process is:

• LuxCoreDeps populates a Conan cache by building each of the required dependencies from its sources.
• This cache is published in LuxCoreDeps releases.
• On LuxCore side, during the build, the cache is retrieved from the release and made available (restored) for LuxCore build.

Server build

LuxCoreDeps is intended to be run by Github CI/CD pipeline.

You will find all workflows in repository actions.:

• LuxCore Dependency Builder: build dependencies, triggered on-demand
• LuxCore Dependency Checker: test dependency build, triggered by push (call Builder)
• LuxCore Dependency Releaser: publish release of dependencies

In a typical workflow: Testing: Releasing

Local build

Local build is