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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Table of Contents

Introduction

This FAQ describes how to checkout a working copy of OpenFX, and answer any common questions that arise.

What is OpenFX?

OpenFX is a suite of advanced 3D modeling, animation and rendering tools. It was developed by Stuart Ferguson and was initially known as SoftF/X. He kindly made the decision to Open Source the project and it was renamed OpenFX.

How do we keep track of changes?

The method that the OpenFX Development Team uses for revision control is a system called CVS, which was developed by Cyclic Software and is available free for use by anyone. If you don't know how CVS works, I highly recommend that you read the online version of the CVS Book at http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html. It's quite long, but ignore the advanced bits if you want and just learn the basics. In a nutshell however, CVS enables multiple developers to "check out" a copy of source code, and commit changes back and receive other developers' updates, while resolving any conflicts that may arise in the code. It also supports "branching" code trees, so that a stable and development tree can be maintained, for example.

How is OpenFX licensed?

OpenFX uses the GNU General Public License, which is a true Open Source license. It means that the code is open and available for anyone to download, but that anyone who patches the source-code must make the patch publicly available if they wish to profit from the changes.

Will it be restricted to the Windows platform?

At the moment, it only works under Windows, but we are concentrating development efforts to get it running stably under Linux before release. This is not being done by rewriting it, but rather by using the WINE package to run the Windows code under Linux.

There is a lot of interest within the development team to make OpenFX as cross-platform as possible, starting with Windows and Linux.

Obtaining OpenFX

Requirements

NOTE: Anonymous access to the OpenFX CVS repository is not yet available. It will happen in the near future though, so if you plan on contributing to the source tree, this section of the FAQ is for you!

Is it better to use CVS or WinCVS?

CVS is a command-line utility to access a source code repository. WinCVS is simply an interface to CVS. We have personally found it easier to just use CVS from the command line. Read on for a quick overview on how to set up CVS. WinCVS has it's quirks, but if you absolutely hate command-line tools, then it's your best bet. Ironically, we've found WinCVS to be more difficult to set up and get started with.

Where can I download WinCVS from?

You will find the latest version of WinCVS at http://www.wincvs.org. Before you use it though, you'll need to download an SSH client.

Downloading WinSSH-1.2.14

You will need the Windows port of SSH to securely access the repository. You can get it by FTP at ftp://ftp.openfx.org/pub/openfx/tools/ssh-1.2.14-win32.zip. Unzip this into a convenient location (e.g. c:\utils\ssh)

Setting up the SSH client

  • Create the directory where you want the OpenFX source to be checked out to.
  • Setup the SSH client. Since this a straight port of UNIX SSH, it is slightly awkward to setup. Follow these instructions closely:
    • Add the location of SSH into your path.
    • Add an environment variable called HOME, which points to the directory where you installed the SSH client. For example, from a command prompt you might type:
      • set PATH=%PATH%;c:\utils\ssh
      • set HOME=c:\utils\ssh
    • If you are using Windows 9x, add these lines (with the correct paths inserted) to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
    • If you are using Windows 2000, to save these for all future sessions do the following:
      • Right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties".
      • Click on the "Advanced" tab.
      • Click on the "Environment Variables..." button.
      • In the top half of the window, click on "New...".
      • Enter HOME for the variable name and the path to the SSH client as the variable value and click on OK.
      • You should already have a PATH variable defined (no need to create a new one). Append the SSH client path (same as for the HOME variable) to your current path.
    • Windows 9x users may have to reboot at this point, to make sure that the environment changes come into effect.
  • Check that the SSH client works by typing "ssh -l username openfx.org" (without the quotes) at a command prompt. Make sure that you replace "username" with your own one. You should be prompted for a password at this stage. If not, then you've done something wrong so go back to step 1!

Setting up CVS for command-line access

To use CVS from the command line, follow these steps:

  • Create an environment variable called CVSROOT and set its value to
    • :ext:username@openfx.org:/home/cvs/openfx
    Follow the instructions given above if you don't know how to do this. Make sure you replace "username" with your own one.
  • Create an environment variable called CVS_RSH and set its value to
    • ssh
    This tells CVS to use your SSH client to connect to the repository.

If you want to test all of this out, try running the command cvs -n update from the command line. You should be prompted for a password. If not, your SSH client is not set up correctly. The -n option tells CVS not to modify your disk or merge files in any way. For debugging purposes, you can try using it in conjunciton with the -t option which enables tracing of the program execution.

If everything appears to work correctly, then you're ready to download a copy of the remote repository to your local disk. You can do this by typing cvs update from the command line. This operation may take a little while to complete when run for the time, but from here on CVS will only attempt to sync your code with that of the remote repository.

Setting up WinCVS

  • Start WinCVS.
  • Select the Admin menu, and go to Preferences.
  • In the General tab, enter your CVSROOT as:
    • username@openfx.org:/home/cvs/openfx
  • Authentication should be "SSH Server".
  • CVS version should be CVS 1.10
  • In the Ports tab, check the "check for alternate rsh name" box, and enter 'ssh' as the alternative.
  • In the WinCVS tab, change the HOME folder to the one you created to store OpenFX in.

Checking out OpenFX using WinCVS

To obtain a copy of the source, you can use WinCVS to checkout the latest copy from the CVS tree. Once you get used to CVS, you can also use it to obtain different branches and tags, such as old copies, or beta development copies.

  • In the views, select the "explore" tab instead of the modules tag.
  • Choose the directory you want to check out OpenFX to.
  • Go to the Create module, and chose "Checkout module to selection". If it's greyed out, you haven't selected a valid directory, so chose one in the explore tab and try again.
  • For the module name, enter "src" and click OK.

At this point, if all has gone well, a command-prompt window will pop up. Enter your password in there, and the copy of OpenFX will be checked out! If you get any error messages, then you probably haven't set something up correctly (doh), so go back and make sure that SSH is working, environment variables are correct, etc.

Compiling OpenFX using Visual C++

Compiling is done using the Visual C++ command-line tools. You'll need to set up some environment variables first. Make sure that the PATH variable includes your VC binary path, the LIB variable points to the VC libraries and the INCLUDE variable points to the VC include files.

To compile OpenFX, simply run MakeAll.BAT from the command line. This batch file does most of the work for you by compiling OpenFX and all of its utilities for the x86 CPU family (Intel).

Contacting us

Should you have any questions (and you should!), your first port of call should be the user and dev mailing lists. You can also e-mail the core development team at core@openfx.org.