This is a tool that builds open source libraries commonly used in games, film, and vfx.

It is more like npm, and less like brew. It knows about dependencies, and fetches what it needs. It builds as correctly and completely as it can, in some cases by working around difficulties or inconsistencies in a library's build system.

It runs installations in the directory in which it is run. For example, you might make a staging directory, such as c:\projects, or ~\projects. Running mkvfx in that directory will populate it according to the instructions in the various build recipes. Typically, you will end up with the following directories, and miscellaneous others in the directory you run in:

include
bin
lib

Mkvfx will populate minimal local dependencies. If you are making a project that needs only OpenSubdiv, running

 mkvfx OpenSubdiv

in your project directory will give you the strict local dependencies to have a working copy of OpenSubdiv, and nothing extraneous. This makes it very easy to quarantine a project. If you also need OpenEXR in that same project, subsequently running

 mkvfx OpenEXR

will add the bits that were not already there for OpenSubdiv.

At the moment there are many recipes for OSX, and several for Windows. The recipe system allows building on other platforms.

clone this repo.

Now type mkvfx, (or on windows: python mkvfx) and all will be revealed.

You will see a message like -

 mkvfx knows how to build:
Alembic
assimp
autoconf
bgfx
boost
boost-build-club
bullet
bx
c-blosc
glew
glfw
glm
hdf5
IlmBase
jsoncpp
LabText
libjpeg
libpng
libtiff
llvm
nanovg
OpenColorIO
OpenEXR
OpenImageIO
OpenShadingLanguage-WIP
OpenSubdiv
OpenVDB
partio
ptex
PyIlmBase
python
qt
qt4
qt5
sqlite
stb
tbb


 mkvfx [options] [packages]
 --help           this message
 --install        install previously built package if possible
 --nofetch        skip fetching, default is fetch
 --nobuild        skip build, default is build
 --nodependencies skip dependencies
 -nfd             skip fetch and dependencies
 [packages]       to build, default is nothing


 Note that git repos are shallow cloned.

The OSX SDK contains some conflicting libraries, such as libpng. Traditionally, one sets the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to point at your own runtime environment. This will cause OSX system frameworks to fail though, because OSX will prefer the mkvfx version of those libraries instead of the SDK versions, and then frameworks like ImageIO won't load. It's best therefore to leave the environment undisturbed, and instead contrive that your runtime has another way to find the dynamic libraries.

mkvfx installs symlinks to the runtime libraries in the local bin folder so that tools and utilities in the local bin can run properly without the need to modify the global runtime environment. You can do the same, install your applications into bin, or, you can install the necessary dylibs into your own build directory, or you can invoke link magic to tell the loader where to look, or you can prefer static versions of the libraries, if they can be built that way.

Copyright (c) 2014-2017 Nick Porcino Licensed under the MIT license.