Developing and debugging BlendLuxCore
Introduction
Goal and audience
This document explains the approach to install a development version of BlendLuxCore (BLC) in Blender, so that it's possible to test and debug it.
The targeted audience encompasses:
- BlendLuxCore development contributors
- BlendLuxCore advanced users/alpha testers who have been provided a dev version of BLC, in order to test a new feature.
Statement of problem
BlendLuxCore (BLC) is in two parts:
- Python module
- Underlying pyluxcore library, brought by a Python wheel
In normal life, Blender loads the BLC Python module that has been regularly installed, which in turn loads the wheel from PyPi.
However, when developing BLC, we typically need to:
- Make Blender load a development version of BLC
- And optionally make BLC load a development version of the wheel
Those goals can be achieved via 2 environment variables:
BLC_DEV_PATH: path to the development version of BlendLuxCoreBLC_WHEEL_PATH: path to a development version of the wheel
We'll see the use of those variables through several scenarios.
Prerequisites
In the next parts of the document, we shall assume:
You have set a development environment on your local computer with:
- a cloned repository of BlendLuxCore
- and optionally a cloned repository of LuxCore
You know how to "pack" BlendLuxCore, ie build an installable package of BLC:
cmake -S . -B out -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release cmake --build out
You know how to build a test wheel from LuxCore:
make wheel-test
Scenario #1: Working on BLC, using standard pyluxcore
In the environment where you run Blender, set BLC_DEV_PATH to the path of your dev repository:
export BLC_DEV_PATH=/path/to/BlendLuxCore
Pack BLC, run Blender and install your packed version
Scenario #2: Working on pyluxcore
<WORK IN PROGRESS>
Useful information
The extension is installed in:
$HOME/.config/blender/<blender-version>/extensions/user_default
The wheel is installed in:
$HOME/.config/blender/<blender version>/extensions/.local/lib/python<python-version>/site-packages