DOM guide: Setting up

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 the external libraries that the DOM uses
• Build the DOM
• Build your client application

((EDITOR: This page needs the following improvement: Include a discussion of how to build on Linux. ))

Downloading the COLLADA DOM

The COLLADA DOM is available royalty free and open source for download from SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/collada-dom.

The COLLADA 1.4.1 DOM 1.3.0 is the latest release package. It comes in three varieties:

• A source-code-only distribution
• A binary installer for Visual Studio .NET 2005 (VC8)
• A binary installer for Visual Studio .NET 2003 (VC7)

The COLLADA DOM is packaged for release only a few times a year. The latest COLLADA DOM code, containing the most recent bug fixes and features, can be downloaded directly from the Subversion repository on SourceForge. To grab 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).

External Libraries

Windows

The COLLADA DOM and all client applications have three external dependencies, libxml2, zlib, and iconv. The most current Windows binaries for these libraries can be downloaded from http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html. For convenience, these libraries are packaged together in the "External Libaries" package available from the COLLADA DOM SourceForge download page.

Building the COLLADA DOM requires that the files for the external libraries on which it depends be in a specific directory structure. An environment variable, COLLADA_EXTERNAL_LIBS_LOCATION, needs to be set to the directory that contains the following files:

libxml2/win32/include/libxml/* - The libxml2 headers from the distribution
libxml2/win32/include/iconv.h
libxml2/win32/include/zlib.h
libxml2/win32/lib/iconv_a.lib
libxml2/win32/lib/libxml2_a.lib
libxml2/win32/lib/zlib.lib

Linux

On Linux you need to 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 COLLADA DOM

Windows

The Windows installers include prebuilt binaries (both DLLs and static libraries), so it isn't actually necessary to build the DOM yourself. Still, it may be necessary to build the DOM yourself, e.g. if you downloaded the DOM directly from the Subversion repository on SourceForge. The Windows installers also include the full source.

Project and solution files for Visual Studio .NET 2003 can be found in

<COLLADA_DOM-directory>/projects/VC++7

Project and solution files for Visual Studio .NET 2005 can be found in

<COLLADA_DOM-directory>/projects/VC++8

Open the .sln file for your version of Visual Studio and build whatever configurations you're interested in.

Linux

There are no prebuilt binaries available for Linux, so you'll have to build the DOM yourself.

Go to the COLLADA DOM directory and run

make

for a debug build or

make RELEASE=1

for a release build.

Building Client Applications with Visual Studio

VisualStudio.NET requires additional path and dependency information to properly compile and link applications using the COLLADA DOM.

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

The COLLADA DOM is provided as both static and dynamic link libraries.

To link with the static COLLADA DOM libraries:

• 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
<libxml2, zlib, and iconv lib directory-path> 

• 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
libcollada_STLDatabase.lib
libcollada_LIBXMLPlugin.lib
libcollada_stdErrPlugin.lib
libxml2_a.lib
iconv_a.lib
zlib.lib
wsock32.lib

Linking with the dynamic COLLADA DOM library

To link with the dynamic COLLADA DOM library:

• 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

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

libcollada141dom13.lib

Additional configuration options

• If you are using Visual Studio .NET 2003, sunbstitute vc7 for vc8 in the Additional library directories field.
• To use the debug version of the libraries:
  1. Append "_d" to the end of the COLLADA DOM library names, for example, libcollada_dae_d.lib.
  2. Replace "lib" with "lib-dbg" in the library path.
• 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