INSTALL.scons

Building and Installing Radiance with SCons
-------------------------------------------

This file describes how to build and install Radiance using the SCons
based build system, an alternative to the traditional makeall script
explained in the README file.


Requirements
------------

Please make sure that you have dowloaded and unpacked BOTH the Radiance
source package AND the archive with the auxiliary support files.
Crucial parts of the system will be missing if you only have one of
them, and SCons will be unable to build the software.

SCons is a platform-independent software configuration and build system
written in Python. If SCons and Python are not already installed on your
system, then you need to download and install them first.
At the time of this writing, all versions of SCons work with Python 2.7.
SCons versions from 3.0 up also work with Python 3.x, even if the
documentation may still say otherwise.

  Python:  http://www.python.org/
  SCons:   http://www.scons.org/

For many systems, precompiled packages are available, such as Installer
files for Windows. Most Linux distributions already come with Python
installed and ready to use.

SCons *may* use a libtiff already installed on your system. On posix
systems it usually does. Otherwise the executables requiring it are
not built.

On Windows, Radiance gets built with MS Visual Studio if present, the
free (of cost) community editions are sufficient.
Warning: when VS 2015 came out, the new "universal CRT" from Windows 10,
which was used at the time, had a bug that corrupts data in text pipes.
(Technically, the UCRT is now part of the OS instead of the compiler, 
so you need to make sure you have a fixed version of the CRT SDK.)
Since VS 2017, the "universal CRT" bug is fixed and everyting works fine.


Building
--------

For building Radiance, go to the "ray" directory (where this file
resides) in a console window and type:

 $> scons build

or just

 $> scons

The Scons program will find the necessary information, display a
copyright message for you to acknowledge (once), and proceed to build
the software.

On Windows, the distribution includes a file named "scons.bat", in
case the SCons script is not on the system execution path. You may
need to change this file to point to your actual Python installation.

All build products are stored under "ray/scbuild/<platform>/", where
they are then available for testing and installation.


Configuration
-------------

In the subdirectory "ray/platform/" there are a number of configuration
files for various build environments. In this context, a "platform" is a
specific combination of operating system, Memory model (32 or 64 bit),
and build tools (eg. compiler).
On unix based systems, the compiler usually doesn't make much of a
difference, but on Windows, there are seperate build environments for
toolkits like MingW.

The file "ray/platform/README" explains the settings that can be
configured in those files, and how to create a new one, if you use a
platform that isn't supported yet.


Options
-------

You can add the following command line options when invoking Scons.
The directories given here will override those specified in the
configuration file.

RAD_BASEDIR=<directory>
   The base directory for the installation
   (Default read from config file, depending on platform)

RAD_BINDIR=<directory>
   Install executables here
   (Default read from config file, usually relative to RAD_BASEDIR)

RAD_MANDIR=<directory>
   Install man pages here
   (Default read from config file, usually relative to RAD_BASEDIR)

RAD_RLIBDIR=<directory>
   Install support files here
   (Default read from config file, usually relative to RAD_BASEDIR)

RAD_DEBUG=1|0
   1: Build a debug version
   0: Build a production version (default)

SKIP=1|0
   1: Skip display of License terms
   0: Don't skip (default)

PMAP_OOC=1|0
   This is not yet available on Windows
   1: Build Photon-Maps with Out-of-core Octree (default on unix)
   0: Build Photon-Maps with In-core KD-Tree (hard set on Windows)

MSVC_VERSION=12.0|13.0|14.1
   This is only relevant for building with VC on Windows.
   "12.0" for Visual C/C++ 2013.
   "13.0" for Visual C/C++ 2015 (watch out for CRT bug).
   "14.1" for Visual C/C++ 2017 with up-to-date service packs as of
          this writing.
   By default, SCons will select the C/C++ toolset from the most recent
   installed VC version. If it doesn't select the one you want, you can
   supply an invalid value (eg. 'xxx') and it will print out a list
   of the versions that it found to be available.

SCons will remember the values given with those options, for each
platform seperately. You don't need to supply them again each time when
you run repeated builds and installs, but only when something changes.

Invoking SCons with the -H flag will display informtion about many other
options, but you won't normally need any of those.


Testing
-------

Radiance comes with a (still very incomplete) test suite, which can be
run by invoking

 $> scons test

This executes a series of tests, each indicating success or failure.

Testing via SCons will use the Radiance binaries in the
"ray/scbuild/<platform>/bin" directory, where they are located after
building but before installing, and the support files in "ray/lib/"
or elsewhere in the source tree.
However, it will not trigger a (re-)build if any of those files are out
of date or missing. Instead, it will complain about failed tests because
of missing executables and other files. You need to manually invoke
building and testing runs one after the other to ensure that everything
is where it should be.

Users (that means you!) are invited to contribute more test cases.
The goal is that eventually (almost) all Radiance functionality can be
tested for compliance with the specification and/or expected results.

See the file "ray/test/README.txt" for details about the testing framework
and instructions on how to contribute test cases.


Installation
------------

At the begin of each run, SCons will print the currently configured
installations directories to the console, even when it won't actually
install anything. You can use this to verify that you're about to
install in the right location. If uncertain, just start another build
run (possibly resulting just in a "`build' is up to date." message) while
supplying eg. a new "RAD_BASEDIR=..." parameter to verify the output.
If the path configuration seems botched up, just remove the file
"ray/scbuild/<platform>/install_paths.py" and start from scratch.

The default installation directory structure is as follows:
  Base:      <>       # default depending on platform
  Binaries:  <>/bin
  Library:   <>/share/lib
  Manpages:  <>/share/man
If you keep this structure, make sure to set the PATH, RAYPATH, and
MANPATH environment variables accordingly.

The software will be installed into the directories given either in the
configuration file or through command options, by invoking

 $> scons install

To do this you need write permission in the target directories.
Any files that are not present or not up to date will be (re-)built
before being installed.

You can install parts of the software by specifying one of three special
targets:

 $> scons bininstall   # only executable files
 $> scons rlibinstall  # only support files
 $> scons maninstall   # only manual pages


Cleanup
-------

To save disk space on your system, or in preparation of a fresh build
with different settings, you can clean up the source tree by invoking

 $> scons -c

This will delete all the generated object files, libraries, and
executables below the respective "ray/scbuild/<platform>/" subdirectory.