LuxCoreDeps - The LuxCore Dependency Provider

About

LuxCoreDeps provides the dependencies required to build LuxCore, starting with version 2.10.

LuxCoreDeps is based on Conan dependency manager (https://conan.io/) and Github Actions (https://github.com/features/actions). It builds dependency sets for the following 4 platforms:

• Linux
• Windows
• MacOS x86_64
• MacOS ARM64

How does it work?

On provider side (LuxCoreDeps)

LuxCoreDeps populates a Conan cache, by building & installing all the dependencies (binaries, headers, profiles, metadata...) required to build LuxCore. Once populated, the cache is bundled (conan cache save) and published in a Github release.

On consumer side (LuxCore)

In LuxCore, the provided cache is downloaded from the release and restored locally (conan cache restore), thus making all the dependencies available for LuxCore build. In LuxCore, cache download and restoration are wrapped in a make deps statement.

flowchart LR

  subgraph Deps ["`**LuxCoreDeps**`"]
  direction TB
  GetDeps("Get Dependency<br />Conan Recipes")
  --> BuildDeps(Build Dependencies<br /> in a Conan Cache)
  --> Save(Save Conan Cache)
  --> Publish("Publish Conan Cache<br />(Release)");
  end

  subgraph Core ["`**LuxCore**`"]
  direction TB
  Download("Download Conan Cache<br />(from LuxCoreDeps Release)")
  --> Restore(Restore Conan Cache)
  --> BuildLux(Build LuxCore<br />against Conan Cache);
  end

  Deps --> Core

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Building & Publishing LuxCore Dependencies

(For admin only - requires appropriate rights on repository)

Dependencies are built from sources, thanks to Conan recipes. Building from sources provides the following benefits:

• The binary compatibility (compiler version, GLIBC version etc.) can be controlled in a fine-grained manner. Which, in particular, is required for Python wheel.
• The options of each dependency can be selected precisely.
• The build options (SSE, AVX, compiler optimizations...) can also be selected in fine detail.
• Dependency source code can be patched if needed.

LuxCoreDeps is exclusively intended to be run in continuous integration by Github Actions. The main execution script is .github/workflows/deps.yml.

To trigger dependency build & publish, use LuxCore Dependency Releaser action, with Run workflow button: https://github.com/LuxCoreRender/LuxCoreDeps/actions/workflows/release.yml. This action will build the dependency package and publish it in a release. Please follow semantic versioning when doing so.

Once built, dependencies are made available to LuxCore via LuxCoreDeps releases: https://github.com/LuxCoreRender/LuxCoreDeps/releases

Note that, for debugging purpose, dependency build is also triggered by push events; however, in that case, no release is created.

Adding or Upgrading Dependencies in LuxCoreDeps

(For admin only - requires appropriate rights on repository)

Dependencies can be added or upgraded in LuxCoreDeps by upgrading the conanfile.py file, located in the repository root.

Please refer to the Conan documentation for syntax of conanfile.py and instructions how to modify such a file.

Tips & Caveats

Where to start - LuxCoreDeps entry points

The main entry point is .github/workflows/deps.yml. Other interesting files may be:

• conanfile.py: Conan script to build dependencies
• conan-profiles: folder with Conan profiles

Versioning rules

LuxCoreDeps follows Semantic Versioning (https://semver.org).

Compilation environment

For Python wheels to be built properly, it is essential that dependencies be built by CIBUILDWHEEL, with the same environment (compiler version, docker image, etc.) as the one intended for the wheels. Please note that it requires to build a fake wheel in LuxCoreDeps.

Local recipes

Most of Conan recipes used by LuxCoreDeps are to be found in Conan central repository (Conan center). However, a few ones did not exist on-the-shelf and were created as local recipes: see local-conan-recipes folder.

Debugging

Dependency build can be debugged locally using nektos/act (https://github.com/nektos/act).

utils/debug.sh contains a working example of actinvokation under Linux.

License

This code is released under Apache 2.0 license.