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Adding Environment Variables for Development

This is unnecessary for users!

Users only need to activate their conda environments (conda activate shapeworks). In the past, setting PATH was necessary. Now it will only cause problems.

The simplest way for developers

A script called devenv is provided to setup developer environments on all platforms.

Using devenv script to configure developer environment

The devenv script, short for developer environment, only requires one parameter: the path to the build binaries. It infers the source path from its own location.

It configures the environment of the terminal from which it is sourced such that:

  • PATH and PYTHONPATH point to $BUILD_BIN directory
  • PYTHONPATH points to each module in $SOURCE/Python

This is very useful for development, since after sourcing this, processes in the environment will use executables from the given build and import modules from the developer's source--this includes the compiled portion of the Python bindings!

It dramatically reduces the probability of using the wrong paths for testing, and eliminates the need to pip install any of the Python modules during development.

As an example of using it with a make-based build directory inside source on Linux or OSX: 

(shapeworks) ~/code/ShapeWorks$ source ./devenv.sh ./build/bin

On Windows, to point to the RelWithDebInfo binaries in a build directory inside source: 

(shapeworks) ~/code/ShapeWorks> devenv .\build\bin\RelWithDebInfo

Using git-bash on Windows

Windows may also have a git-bash command line available. This also works with devenv: just source ./devenv.sh like you would on linux/osx.
There is one important issue: running Python scripts requires prefixing with winpty. For example, winpty python RunUseCase.py ....

Any path can be passed as the parameter for this script and it can be called from any location. Another example: 

(shapeworks) ~/code/ShapeWorks/build_xcode/bin/Debug$ source ../../devenv.sh Debug

Manually adding paths

While unnecessary for the use of ShapeWorks, these are the steps to manually add items to your paths.

OSX/Linux

$ export PATH=path/to/add:$PATH

Verify the results with the command: $ echo $PATH

Windows

$ set PATH=path/to/add;%PATH%
This only modifies the path for the current command prompt.

To permanently add to the path (or so you can remove what has previously been added):

  • Go to Settings/Edit the system environment variables/Environment Variables
  • Choose the Path variable and press Edit...
  • Add your path entry to the list

Verify the results with the command: $ echo %PATH%