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Using MSVC

Last edited by Aaron Bray

Building for Visual Studio

Using the CMake GUI

When building on windows, I prefer to use the CMake GUI to setup my Pulse build. I also check the Grouped and Advanced options to make things easier to view.

  • In this example, I have cloned the Pulse repository to: N:/Programming/Pulse/engine
  • I always build Pulse into a directory outside of the build directory, for me I have a dedicated build directory for building all of my repositories: N:/Programming/builds/pulse-engine

Here is what my CMake GUI looks like before the initial configuration step

Next, when you hit the Configure button, please ensure that you are selecting the MSVC of choice with x64. Depending on your CMake version, this configuration GUI can look different and have Win32 as default.


Configuration using CMake 3.10
Configuration using CMake 3.14

Once configured, I select both the CLR and Baseline Download options, you do not need to do this if you don't want to. Getting the baselines is handy to see examples of what Pulse can do. CMake_Configured

Next, Hit Generate and Open Project This will automatically open the Pulse Superbuild solution. You may manually open the Pulse.sln, which using my CMake settings above, will be in : N:\Programming\builds\pulse-engine

CMake_Generated

From with in MSVC, choose Build->Build Solution
Note You are only able to build Release. This is intentional, as this build will also need to execute the Pulse engine to generate state data for use in many of the examples. Executing the engine in Debug is very slow and this would take a long time. To build the Debug version of Pulse, do so from the Innerbuild solution.

After the build is complete, you can exit the root build level Pulse.sln You should then open the Pulse.sln found in : N:\Programming\builds\pulse-engine\Innerbuild

With release already built, I recommend building the INSTALL project in Debug.

Running the Scenario Driver

If you are going to run the SceanrioDriver through visual studio follow these steps :

  • Right-click the ScenarioDriver project and select 'Set as Startup Project'
  • Right-click the Project and select settings
  • Make sure you are on the appropriate configuration in the Configuration drop down. The one you intend to run
    • You probably want to do this for all configuration in the solution
  • In 'Command Arguments' Put in the full path (or a path relative to the bin directory) of the scenario file you wish to run

You will also need to set the working directory for the UnitTestDriver if you want to run that through visual studio as well.

Running the How To Examples

If you are going to run the HowToDriver through visual studio follow these steps :

  • Right-click the HowToDriver project and select 'Set as Startup Project'
  • Open the EngineHowTo.cpp
    • Here, you can adjust the comments to run the function examples you are interested in
  • Put breakpoints and step code to see how things work
  • Modify any of the examples as you wish
  • The HowTo-Sandbox.cpp is a good place to experiment with Pulse

image

Development Command Window

As part of developing with Pulse, it is recommended to have a command window up and in your build/install/bin directory. This command window will be used to run our test suite.

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