[Boost-build] Help building Maya plugins

Subject: [Boost-build] Help building Maya plugins
From: Justin Walker (Justin.Walker_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-12-19 20:00:56

I'm trying to set up a build system that will allow us to easily build 
and install Maya plugins. I'll start by explaining what I want and 
enumerate each of the steps I'd like help with.

Maya is a 3D software package that provides an API and libraries for 
writing plugins. You typically write your C++ code, include the 
appropriate Maya headers, link against the appropriate Maya libraries, 
then point Maya to the location of your compiled plugins in order to 
load them. Our challenge is that we have many different versions of Maya 
available. Sometimes we want to compile against a single version and 
sometimes against multiple versions. Here is a typical scenario:

Maya is installed in /apps/maya/<version>. So we could have the following:
/apps/maya/1.0.0/include
/apps/maya/1.0.0/lib
/apps/maya/1.0.1/include
/apps/maya/1.0.1/lib
/apps/maya/1.1.0/include
/apps/maya/1.1.0/lib
/mycode/src/plugin.cpp

I want to write a rule that would look something like the following:

lib plugin : plugin.cpp /maya//Maya ;

and it will generate the following:

g++ -o bin/blah/1.0.0/plugin.so -I/apps/maya/1.0.0/include 
-L/apps/maya/1.0.0/lib -lMaya
g++ -o bin/blah/1.0.1/plugin.so -I/apps/maya/1.0.1/include 
-L/apps/maya/1.0.1/lib -lMaya
g++ -o bin/blah/1.1.0/plugin.so -I/apps/maya/1.1.0/include 
-L/apps/maya/1.1.0/lib -lMaya

Note that the output binary name is "plugin.so" and not "libplugin.so".

I want the installed libraries to get installed into the following 
locations:

maya/plugins/1.0.0/plugin.so
maya/plugins/1.0.1/plugin.so
maya/plugins/1.1.0/plugin.so

I then want to be able to override this when necessary. Something like 
the following:

lib plugin : plugin.cpp /maya//Maya : <maya>1.0.0 ;

This only builds the 1.0.0 version of the plugin.

Finally sometimes the 1.0.1 version is binary compatible with the 1.0.0 
version. Instead of building a plugin I instead want to create a symlink 
named maya/plugins/1.0.1 that points to maya/plugins/1.0.0.

I'd appreciate any help on how to approach this challenge. Should I 
create a new Maya package? Should I create a new feature and add each of 
the version strings as possible values? How do I iterate over each of 
the requested values and modify the include and search properties 
appropriately. How do I assign the install dir based on the version string?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Justin Walker