I’m trying to take advantage of the wonderful icons jendrzych made for Blender, and that requires I patch Blender. Something I’ve not done yet…
I Googled, and found this http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Writing_Patches.142.0.html
So I copied/pasted the text for the patch, and saved it locally on my computer. I then fired up Blender, and tried the only thing I could think of… Typing into the “black DOS window.” Well, that did nothing. I couldn’t get anything to type in that darn DOS window, no matter how hard I tried.
So I Googled again, which led me to an unanswered thread here, and instructions on how to compile Blender using scones. erhm, Scons.
Any chance someone could help me out?
I’m relatively new to the whole programming/patching/compiling world, though I’m fairly proficient with computers themselves. Or at least I thought so, until I discovered the Open Source community about 2 years ago.
Go here (total list of tutorials. link you want is at bottom of page) or here (direct link) .
I think you are in for a long wait time downloading I think unless you have MS Visual Studio Express already though I think there is a link in the tut for another method using Scons . Even with that you still need a few very large files to build properly . But hay once you do you can start on your way to working with Blender code!
Well frankly, if you thought you could apply a patch by typing it into the dos window, I’d say you’re far over your head in deep deep water
You’re going to have download the Blender source code, download and install a compiler environment and recompile all the sources … all to get some icons working.
It is possible, heck a dummy like me even had a compiler environment setup at one time until it broke and I haven’t been able … or had the energy to get it working again.
I’d honestly say to forget it though, you’re probably looking at 10-50 hours or more of effort. … Unless you’re keen to learn programming and are up for a HUGE challenge
It’s not any easier in Linux than in Windows, it’s not a simple matter of “overwrite this file” … with the executables that is.
haha, I had no idea it would take this much effort.
Well I suppose now it’s not so much about the icons as it is the knowledge.
My intent is to become a Computer Software Engineer, which would obviously require some knowledge in this area (source code, compiling, etc). While I may be “over my head in deep deep water,” I’ve always loved to swim.
Well if you want to be a S.E. (we used to call them programmers … and I used to work as one), ya, you’re going to need “some” knowledge of compilers and source code
Blender can be built (compiled) using a number of different compilers. For Linux gcc is proabably the system you’d want to use. If you’re running Linux you may already have it installed. Open a console / cmd prompt and type ‘gcc’ (no quotes) and see if you get "unknown command’ or “no input files given” . If it’s the second, then it’s on your system and you (might) be already halfway there.
If not, installing a compiler is sometimes easier than doing it on WindoZe.
For Windoze, I haven’t tried setting up the MSVC free compiler. At one time I had the MingW / Msys system running. I chose it because it was small and I’m on dialup …unfortuneately. I also tried setting up Scons but couldn’t get it to work, so I used the old “traditional” Make system, which only needed a couple of obscure tweaks to get running.
You’ll also want a ‘CVS’ client program, if you’re on Linux, it again, might be automatically installed, … been awhile since I had a Linux system runing. The CVS client lets you download just the files that have changed (after the first initial download which obviously requires all of the files), as the source code changes daily (actually sometimes even hour by hour).
When you have everything in place, you’ll either type “make” or “scons” depending on what system you’re running (or some other commands for MSVC … I haven’t used that system), and after 20-40 minutes or so, if everything works, you’ll end up with you’re very own compiled Blender ! Then you can start in with trying to change some small things… starting with your “patch”. Applying a patch is another separate task asiide from compiling. It’s not all that difficult,and you can find instructions on the web.
Then you’ll want to look at the CVS commit logs, which are probably the best source for seeing examples of how to change the code, as they show “diff” output which are the differences between files before they were changed vs afterwards, with a brief description of what was changed / added / fixed in the functionality of the program.
My intent is to become a Computer Software Engineer, which would obviously require some knowledge in this area
You will save yourself soooo much time and headaches if you take a crack at this on a linux box. The vast majority of open source projects are developed on *nix machines, and although some of them may be ported to windows machines, it’s still absolute hell, and a total hack, working with development systems designed for *nix on a windows box.
You can get it to work if you install the Mingw compiler and tools, but it’s still messy.
If you really want to learn how to deal with source code, CMS (like CVS), patching, compilers, automated build systems (like scons), etc… then start by learning how to use Linux. This stuff is very common, and generally supported by default on Linux boxes. If you’re looking for a distro that you will learn a lot from a CSE point of view, I would recommend Gentoo.
My aunt recently purchased a new laptop, so I’ll be getting her old desktop.
It has Windows ME, which is ridiculously awful, and I plan on installing Linux on that machine. It’ll be my first encounter with Linux, but I’ll have my family’s laptop (this one) to get help.
Then you can start in with trying to change some small things… starting with your “patch”. Applying a patch is another separate task asiide from compiling. It’s not all that difficult,and you can find instructions on the web.