Build Setup

Two different build setups are provided with the PathEngine source.

On platforms where building from Visual Studio is supported, suitable Visual Studio project and configuration files are supplied.

For other platforms, a set of python build scripts is supplied.

Changing the build environment

The Visual Studio configuration files and python build scripts are provided as a quick way to get in and build the source code, and to demonstrate a standard set of configurations and compilation and linker settings for each platform.

It should then be straightforward to get in and change the compiler settings, either by modifying the supplied build setup, or by building the PathEngine source files under a different build environment.

Setting up a build from scratch

PathEngine is designed with a very minimal set of build configuration requirements.
The static libraries, in particular, do not use any per-project configuration, only global compilation settings, and much of this can be omitted whilst still obtaining a working build.

In addition to building from the supplied build setup, it should be relatively easy, also, to get a build set up from scratch based only on the set of source files for each project.
Text files listing this set of source files for each project can then be found in 'SDKRoot/projectObjectList' (these are text files used by the python build scripts).

Refer to Preprocessor Defines, then, for information about the set of preprocessor defines used with PathEngine, and Include Directories, for information about the set of include directory settings required for compilation and include directory order.

Per project configuration for other targets

While there is some per project configuration used for other targets (e.g. the PathEngine dll), this is extremely minimal, and is really little more than a set of dependencies expressed in terms of the static libs required for the build target.

See the file 'SDKRoot/code/PathEngine/buildInfo.xml' as an example. (This is the configuration file used by the python build scripts.)

Minimise manual work when updating to new releases

While it can be useful to customise the exact build, it is also important to minimise the amount of manual work required each time you update to a new release of PathEngine.
One way to do this is to setup scripts to build the relevant configuration information directly from the set of objects in the project directories of any PathEngine release.
We actually use some python scripts to do this, internally, and can provide examples to clients wishing to set up something similar at their end.

Checking issues against the default build, and prebuilt binaries

When issues are encountered against a modified build (or modified source code), it's important to check if the same issues also occur against the default build, or against the prebuilt binary for the same release, to eliminate the possibility of the issues being caused by local modifications.