[Pyosg-news] Build systems, additions

[Hugo v. d. M. <s13...@ba...>]

Hello PyOSG users/developers! (especially Gideon May)

It's been a while, but I'm now back, hacking a bit at Boost.Python,
PyOSG, and PyDemeter again. I'm busy working on a new PyDemeter
release, though at this point the previous release is building quite
fine with the new Demeter.

------ Build systems ------

The coolest thing I'm playing with now is a different build system,
"scons", really really cool for the Python fans amongst us.

Why exactly I'm using scons and not bjam? Because I want to use my
system's boost libraries. (Boost is available in Debian.) I decided
not to go to the trouble of figuring out how to use bjam to build
PyOSG when I don't have the boost sources. (I think I might have
managed this before, replicating something like the tools/build
directory tree, or some such thing.)

The point being, I really like scons, and will be using it for all my
projects from now on. As such, PyDemeter will come with a SConscript
file for building it with scons, possibly also a Jamfile, but I won't
be giving it much attention. (In the past I had a Makefile as well, I
have yet to decide what will happen to that.) In my opinion, scons
should become the future standard build-tool for *everything* <g>

I think scons will probably take a little more work to make it
cross-platform, just a little, since scons doesn't know per default
what parameters Boost.Python extensions want to be built with, and
afaik, doesn't know how to do "release" and "debug" builds per default
like bjam does, but it gives you all the flexibility one could dream
of.

For interrest's sake, I've attached my current (alpha) SConscript
files. The PyOSG.SConscript file gets a list of extensions from the
PyOSG Jamfile. ;) Then it assumes an extension has a directory, and
all .cpp files in that directory belong to the extension.

My PyDemeter SConscript file checks for tmp/PyOSG-0.4.0/SConscript,
and will "include" that if it is found, thereby allowing me to build
PyOSG and PyDemeter together, a really nice development environment.
(Sure, possible with bjam too, but I've never been able to figure out
how to *install* stuff with bjam. And have I mentioned I love Python,
and therefore scons? ;)

(I dream of setting up SConscript files on my machine in such a way
that I just run scons, telling it where to find demeter,
openscenegraph and producer sources, then it builds and installs
everything automatically.)

------ PyOSG 0.4.0+ ------

I'm looking forward to the next PyOSG release, I just want to be sure
that a couple of missing things make it in. I believe I've mentioned
them before, but it was a long time ago. In fact, I do believe the new
wrappers are going to be more complete, I just want to remove any
doubt. Is there a place I can find a newer version than 0.4.0, to see
what is available in it, and if it is missing anything I need, so I
can contribute before it is released? (Unfortunately I may be away
from an Internet connection for two weeks, after that I still have a
week or two in which I will definately be playing with this stuff.)


Matrix:
 - matrix.def(osg::Vec3() * self)
 - matrix.def("rotate", (osg::Matrix (*)(const osg::Vec3&, const osg::Vec3&)) &osg::Matrix::rotate)

Vec3:
Copy constructor, or some other method to copy, such as .copy(), I
like this:
 - vec3.def(init<const osg::Vec3&>())


Quat:
namespace
{
const tuple osgQuat_getRotate(osg::Quat* q)
{
    float angle, x, y, z;
    q->getRotate(angle, x, y, z);
    return boost::python::make_tuple(angle, x, y, z);
}
}
.def("getRotate", osgQuat_getRotate)
// And some other rotation methods, iirc


Thanks,
Hugo van der Merwe