My friends. My dear creative colleagues. All I want to know is… how. to install. Cinder. One would think this could be found in the very first paragraph of the Set Up Guide, indeed that it might in fact be the purpose of the Set Up Guide… alas, here I am, hours later. Xcode running aimlessly, without purpose. The pre-packaged Cinder download folder sitting there, splayed open on the desktop. Lifeless and unintelligible. 10 open tabs of Youtube “tutorials” with no explanations, spoken, written, or otherwise – just screen footage of speed typing neckbeards.
If you haven’t gathered by now, I am unabashedly a n00b in every sense. I have a basic theoretical understanding of C++ from resources like Sololearn, but very little deep hands on coding experience. Apart from their purpose, I have a limited understanding of how C++ libraries work. Can someone please, using words, explain how to install the library. Which file? In which folder in this mess of a download package? Is this a drag and drop kind of operation or copy and paste into the command line and hope you did it right? Am I completely missing the obvious? As I mentioned, I am using Mac, Xcode, and every ounce of patience I possess. Thank you all in advance for your kind and timely responses.
Hey there and welcome.
Maybe it’s a confusion in naming conventions, but you don’t really “install” Cinder. Cinder exists as a bunch of C++ source files that all wrap the difficult parts of C++ and openGL (among other things) into a nice package. When you’re setting it up from git, you can “build” it into a library which you can then use in your projects. If you’re having a hard time doing this, check out of of the past releases, as they are already built for you! https://libcinder.org/download
However, if you want to build the latest branch from git, this guide is still up to date: https://libcinder.org/docs/guides/git/index.html
There is a handy script included that helps you build everything all at once. Change directories into the folder, and then run it with the following.
cd xcode
./fullbuild.sh
After this, to get started with a new project, I’d recommend using TinderBox (which is included in the “tools” folder. It will set up the projects for you so you can get down to coding. If you got Cinder from git and you don’t see it, you probably have to clone the submodules. You can do so with the following line (executed in the Cinder root folder)
git submodule update --init --recursive
Otherwise if you’re still having problems maybe you could tell us what you’ve tried, and any errors that come up when you try to build or anything like that.
Good luck!
charlie
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