DOM guide: Setting up

DOM 1.3	This revision of this article is current for COLLADA DOM version 1.3. See DOM 1.3 documentation for all related articles. See Portal:COLLADA DOM for other documentation versions.

This article describes how to set up your software and system to use the COLLADA DOM.

Overview

To use the COLLADA DOM in a client application, you must:

• Download the DOM
• Download and prepare the external libraries that the DOM uses
• Build the DOM
• Build your client application

Downloading the COLLADA DOM

The latest official release of the DOM is version 1.3.0, and is available as a zip file or a Windows installer from the SourceForge downloads page. The Subversion repository on SourceForge has the newest development code containing the most recent bug fixes and features. The rest of this page is written for the latest code in Subversion. If you're using DOM 1.3.0, use this page instead.

To use the code from Subversion, you'll first need to download and install a Subversion client for your platform from http://subversion.tigris.org/project_packages.html. Then, open a console and run the command:

svn co https://collada-dom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/collada-dom/COLLADA_DOM/trunk COLLADA_DOM

That downloads the latest copy of the COLLADA DOM to the COLLADA_DOM subdirectory (as specified by the last parameter).

Setting up on Windows

Preparing the external libraries

All of the DOM's dependencies are packaged in an "external-libs" folder on SourceForge. You can get the external libs with this command:

svn co https://collada-dom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/collada-dom/external-libs external-libs

Then create an environment variable called COLLADA_EXTERNAL_LIBS_LOCATION that points to the external-libs directory using an absolute path, like so: C:\collada\external-libs

Building the DOM

Project and solution files for Visual Studio can be found in

<COLLADA_DOM-directory>\projects

The files for VS 2003 will be in the "VC++7" folder and the files for VS 2005 will be in the "VC++8" folder. Open COLLADA_DOM.sln and build. If you want to use the DOM as a DLL, make sure to build the DLL DOM configuration.

Building client applications

Setting up include directories

Add the following information to your project:

• Add the following lines to the Additional include directories field in the General tab for the C/C++ project configuration settings:

<COLLADA_DOM-path>\include
<COLLADA_DOM-path>\include\1.4

Linking with the static COLLADA DOM libararies

• Add the following lines to the Additional library directories field in the General tab for the Linker project configuration settings:

<COLLADA_DOM-path>\lib\vc8_1.4
$(COLLADA_EXTERNAL_LIBS_LOCATION)\libxml2\win32\lib

• Add the following lines to the Additional Dependencies field in the Input tab for the Linker project configuration settings:

libcollada_dae.lib
libcollada_dom.lib
libxml2_a.lib
zlib.lib
wsock32.lib

Linking with the COLLADA DOM DLL

• Add the following line to the Preprecessor Definitions field in the Preprocessor tab for the C/C++ project configuration settings:

DOM_DYNAMIC

• Add the following line to the Additional library directories field in the General tab for the Linker project configuration settings:

<COLLADA_DOM-path>\lib\vc8_1.4_dll

• Add the following line to the Additional Dependencies field in the Input tab for the Linker project configuration settings:

libcolladadom13.lib

Additional configuration options

• If you are using Visual Studio 2003, substitute vc7 for vc8 in the Additional library directories field.
• To use the debug libraries append "_debug" to the end of the COLLADA DOM library path, for example "<COLLADA_DOM-path>\lib\vc8_1.4_debug".
• Make sure that your application is using the correct runtime libraries. The Runtime Library field in the Code Generation tab for the C/C++ configuration options should be set to:
  • "Multi-threaded DLL" if using the release builds of the library
  • "Multi-threaded Debug DLL" if using the debug builds

Setting up on Linux

Preparing the external libraries

On Linux, make sure the libxml2 headers and libs are installed. On Debian-based systems you can install the package libxml2-dev:

apt-get install libxml2-dev

Building the DOM

There are no prebuilt binaries available for Linux, so you'll have to build the DOM yourself. Also, currently there is no shared library version of the COLLADA DOM on Linux. Only static libs are available.

Go to the COLLADA DOM directory and run

make

for a debug build or

make RELEASE=1

for a release build.

Building client applications

Adding the COLLADA DOM to /usr/include and /usr/lib

When building client applications on Linux, it's convenient to install the DOM headers and libs to /usr/include and /usr/lib, respectively. To install, go to the COLLADA DOM directory and run

make install

to install the debug COLLADA DOM or

make install RELEASE=1

to install the release version of the DOM. You can uninstall by running

make uninstall

Building the Client App

If you have a file test.cpp that works with the COLLADA DOM, you can build it with g++ like this:

g++ -Wall -I/usr/include/collada test.cpp -lcollada_dae -lcollada_dom 
    -lcollada_dae -lcollada_STLDatabase -lcollada_stdErrPlugin -lcollada_LIBXMLPlugin -lxml2 -o test

The collada_dae is deliberately included twice. This is necessary to resolve all the dependencies between the DAE and the DOM libraries.

Setting up on Mac

Preparing the external libraries

On OS X Tiger (10.4) all dependencies to build the COLLADA DOM are shipped with the OS. No additional installations are required.

If you want to use libxml2 to validate your COLLADA-files against the schema, you have to download and install an updated version of libxml2 from here. That is because of a bug in an earlier libxml2-version that is shipped with OS X Tiger. However, the DOM itself is not affected by it and runs perfectly with the Tiger-shipped libxml2 version.

Building the DOM

NOTE: Mac-projects are currently available in SVN only. Get a current precompiled UniversalBinary SVN-version from here.

The preferred way of using the DOM on Mac OS X is to build a framework containing the shared library, necessary header files, and documentation (see here for more information about the concept of frameworks).

The project file for Xcode to build the framework can be found in

<COLLADA_DOM-directory>/projects/Xcode

Note that you should use Xcode 2.4 or better. You can download the latest version from here.

Using the Release configuration, the DOM is built as a Universal Binary for PPC and Intel. The preferred installation location is /Library/Frameworks.

Building client applications

Copy the DOM-framework to /Library/Frameworks, the standard location for external frameworks.

Using Xcode

In Xcode add the framework to your project (Project->Add to Project). In the build-configuration of your target, add -Library/Frameworks/Collada141Dom.framework/Headers to Header Search Paths. You are now ready to build your client applications.

Using Make and gcc

Additional gcc compiler arguments:

-I/Library/Frameworks/Collada141Dom.framework/Headers

Additional linker arguments:

-framework Collada141Dom

Using different installation locations for DOM framework

You can install the DOM framework in a different location than /Library/Frameworks. For example, you might use it as an embedded framework in your application bundle. To avoid linker errors, you can either change the Installation Directory build setting in the DOM Xcode project and rebuild the project, or use otool and install_name_tool to modify an already build framework. For more information, see

man otool

and

man install_name_tool