Extra files in source code download?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

I have the GIMP and Blender source code and it seems to me like there’s a lot of unnecessary files.

Are all these files included in the downloads really necessary to the build process?

I know there’s licenses and readme’s, that’s obviously necessary, but what about all the rest?

Sometimes there’s a Visual Studio workspace/or project file, does that have all the source code?

And then you can navigate the folders and find the files without any sort of IDE project file, just by themselves.

I assume that’s for building on linux and such?

#2

Usually, everything in the sources are necessary. Things like headers and such, which would render the program useless otherwise.

I recommend never erasing anything from the sources, unless you redirect the calls to that yourself, which would probably mean craploads of work in the source.

#3

if it’s a GNU software, then it probably does have a lot of files in it (configure.in Makefile.am etc.) but they are necessary to compile, and usually, the source will be in a dir called src, or source, headers might be in include, and libraries would be in libs (though these aren’t a standard for all open source programs). I can see where you’re coming from for the GIMP source, but blender doesn’t have that many bloat files. as for the project files, they just contain information about paths, and include dirs and libraries etc. that are needed for that project file’s program to compile the program

#4

I see; but in Blender I think the source>blender>src directory contains UI related files, not the actual core. :confused:

EDIT: Never mind, there it is…:wink:

But that’s kind of off topic…:stuck_out_tongue:

#5

yeah, I wasn’t stating a standard, I was just saying that often, the source is an a ‘src’ or ‘source’ directory