Building LuxCoreRender

This page is under construction

This document describes 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 build approaches, depending on the use case. This document therefore distinguishes 2 different build workflows.

Audience

This document is primarily intended for:

• LuxCoreRender administrators in charge of releasing the various LuxCoreRender end-products;
• 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
• git
• Github
• Python Wheels

Familiarity with Conan dependency manager may also help.

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

Synoptics

LuxCoreRender contains multiple targets, below represented with dependency links:

Target	Source Repository	Content
External Dependencies	LuxCoreRender/LuxCoreDeps	A bundled Conan cache populated with LuxCoreRender external dependency binaries, built from sources. Please refer to LuxCoreDeps README for more information.
LuxCore	LuxCoreRender/LuxCore	LuxCore core binaries, in the form of static and shared libraries: luxcore.so, luxcore_static.lib, luxcore.dll etc.
Samples	LuxCoreRender/LuxCore	Sample C++ programs, illustrating luxcore use, namely luxcoreconsole and luxcoreui
Python Wheels	LuxCoreRender/LuxCore	Python bindings of core binaries, in the form of Python wheels (1 per pair Platform/Python version). As a byproduct, a Pythonized version of LuxCore shared library is also built (pyluxcore.so).
Plugins	LuxCoreRender/<plugin-repo>	Plugins to expose LuxCore in various external applications, notably Blender. Mostly written in Python and relying on Python Wheels as runtime dependency.
Python LuxCore Tools (PyLuxCoreTools)	LuxCoreRender/LuxCore	Set of command line tools based on pyluxcore, written in Python.

Targeted platforms

LuxCoreRender aims at being available on the following 4 platforms:

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

For Python-related targets,LuxCoreRender aims at being available for all Python versions supported at a given time (https://devguide.python.org/versions/).

Scope of this document

The scope of this document is:

• External Dependencies
• LuxCore
• Python Wheels
• Samples

Plugin builds are documented in dedicated wiki pages.
PyLuxCoreTools build documentation is in "TODO" status.

Build Workflows

Publisher Workflows

These workflows are designed to be used by LuxCoreRender administrators to publish a new release of one or more LuxCoreRender components. These workflows take place in a CI/CD Github pipeline.

These workflows are not designed for debugging or testing the underlying code. Execution of these workflows assumes that the development phase has been correctly completed and the underlying code is ready for final build and release. See Template:Section link for more information.

Running these workflows require users to be granted of extended rights on LuxCoreRender repositories.

External Dependencies

Standard Build

Caveat: if you provide an already-existing release version number during the process, this action will replace the existing release with the newly-built one. This can be what you expected... or not. Be cautious.

To build a new release of Dependencies:

Test & Debug Build

Canonical build may not be suitable for testing and debugging needs (for instance, when adding, updating or removing dependencies...). In such situations, there are 2 options:

• Server build: run workflow on server, but without creating any release
• Local build: run workflow on local computer (user PC)

Server build

The process is nearly the same as canonical build, but the release creation steps are skipped. For that purpose, another Github workflow is executed: LuxCore Dependency Checker.
Please note that your changes must have been committed to repository beforehands.

If build succeeds, you will find the expected outputs in Artifacts section of the action run.

Local build
Thanks to nektos/act, it is possible Github Workflows locally.

After installation (left to the reader), act can be called directly on command line. For more convenience, a script is also provided in LuxCoreDeps repository: utils/debug.sh (Linux only, at the moment).

Python Wheels

Standard Build

Caveat: if you provide an already-existing release version number during the process, this action will replace the existing release with the newly-built one. This can be what you expected... or not. Be cautious.

Prerequisite: you must have release a compatible version of External Dependencies (LuxCoreDeps) before building Python Wheels.

To build a new release of Python Wheels:

Test & Debug Build

Standard build may not be suitable for testing and debugging needs (for instance, when modifying build process...). In such situations, there are 3 options:

• Server build: run workflow on server, but without creating any release
• Local build - run workflow: run workflow on local computer (user PC)
• Local build - developper:

Server build

The process is nearly the same as canonical build, but the release creation steps are skipped. For that purpose, another Github workflow is executed: LuxCore Dependency Builder.
Please note that your changes must have been committed to repository beforehand.

If build succeeds, you will find the expected outputs in Artifacts section of the action run.

Local build
Thanks to nektos/act, it is possible Github Workflows locally.

After installation (left to the reader), act can be called directly on command line. For more convenience, a script is also provided in LuxCoreDeps repository: utils/debug.sh (Linux only, at the moment).

Wheels Deployment

As far as wheels are concerned, in addition to building them, it is also necessary to upload them to PyPi ("deploy" them), so that they are available for pip installation.

Prerequisite: you must have released a set of Python Wheels beforehand.

Samples

As we plan to replace Samples by Python tools, there is no Releaser workflow, just a Builder one. Releases have to be created manually, on the basis of Builder's artifacts.

Miscellaneous

TODO Python Wheels: Pointer to deps Semantic Versioning