Hey! the site looks great and all but i am running in circles trying to find some information on the source files. Is there somewhere on this site that tells you how to get the source files and what source files you need to do anything in blender. I know something of the CVS but, what is it? what do i need to have to compile blender? and so on... please help.

Could there be a faq page for source files?

Thanks

toast wrote:

Hey! the site looks great and all but i am running in circles trying to find some information on the source files. Is there somewhere on this site that tells you how to get the source files and what source files you need to do anything in blender. I know something of the CVS but, what is it? what do i need to have to compile blender? and so on... please help. Could there be a faq page for source files? Thanks

Download a copy of TortoiseCVS ..
http://www.tortoisecvs.org/

And read the documentation.. I forgot how I set it up
but Tortoise makes it really easy once you get it going..
I'm using windows, but there is probably versions for Linux and other
OS's.

I found this line in a file named "ROOT" in the CVS directory
of my the root to the distribution..

:pserver:anonymous@cvs.blender.org:/cvs01

When you use Tortoise for the first time, I think it is that
you create a directory named "Blender" for instance,
then you right-click on the directory and you select "CVS Checkout"

You type into CVSROOT:
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.blender.org:/cvs01

(maybe its ":pserver:anonymous@cvs.blender.org:/cvsroot/bf-blender" ??)

It will then fille out the rest of the form for you..

It should read:

Module: blender
Protocol: Password server (:pserver:)
Server: cvs.blender.org
Repository directory: /cvsroot/bf-blender
User name: anonymous

Then you click "OK"

and it will (I think start downloading the source code to blender)..

This takes about an hour or so (over a modem), maybe less over DSL..

Then once it is done, the folder you named will turn green, this
means that it is a CVS source folder and any of the files in it
can be worked on and checked in to the CVS system..

CVS (Control? Versioning System) is a higher form of RCS (Revision Control System), what it allows you to do (and this has use outside that of programming) you can lockdown a file and change it, then check it in,
then any changes you have made get appended to a modification tree,
you can go back in time to a previous revision and see the source code
before certain modifications, it keeps you from hacking your code
to death and ending up in trouble, by allowing you infinite UNDO and REDO on a soruce tree.

Now compiling what you get is a different issue, and currently for Windows it seems you will need Visual C++ 6.0 to compile it.. Without
that you can't really compile it unless you like using Blender in an XWindows emulation under cygwin (www.cygwin.org).

I am waiting, myself..

But its fun to read the source code and see all the cussing that went
on between the developers..

Toast, this page may help you too:

http://www.blender3d.org/Download/?sub=Source

Thanks for all the info. I download CVS and got all the source files. I have learned that you have to jump thru hoops of fire just to compile blender on a windows system. Guess i will have to wait until the rings are within my jumping range . Maybe some of those long legged programmers can lower them a bit. Thanks again ! I have never knew such a thing existed as CVS.

Until next time

toast