CREO2URDF – How we deploy the plugin

[Nicogene]

This discussion started via chat between @traversaro and me, but I think it is better to track it in a dedicated issue.

As reported here @mfussi66 and I faced some issues trying to load the creo2urdf.dll when it links libraries that are not the system or creo ones.

As proposed by @traversaro, in order to make easier the fruition of the plugin in the future, we might think to compile everything static in order to deliver something selfcontained.

This is something more in line with the philosophy of Windows, but we have to see if we can do without unlocking the plugin

cc @pattacini

[traversaro]

Something that it is important to know is that if you want to do this probably we need to compile the library as static but still with the /MD option, we did something similar in the danieli joint lab for some deployments, see https://github.com/iit-danieli-joint-lab/idjl-software/issues/2421 .

[traversaro]

To help on #13 (comment), let me write down how to proceed to do:

Try with idyntree compiled all static

To do so, we need to:

• Download vcpkg (https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg)
• Bootstrap vcpkg
• Run [path to vcpkg]/vcpkg install --triplet x64-windows-static-md eigen3 libxml2 assimp and wait for the compilation to ends successfully
• Compile idyntree from source following the instructions in https://github.com/robotology/idyntree/blob/master/doc/build-from-source.md, remembering to pass -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=[path to vcpkg]/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=x64-windows-static-md and -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=OFF to ensure that iDynTree is compiled as static. Furthermore, make sure that indeed iDynTree is compiled with MD (that should be the default)
  • (the previous step could be avoided if we packaged idyntree directly in vcpkg)
• At this point, install iDynTree and add pass -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=[path to vcpkg]/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=x64-windows-static-md to the creo2urdf compilation, remembering also to pass the iDynTree's installaton location via CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH.

After doing so, the creo2urdf should link statically iDynTree and libxml2, reducing all possible interferences.

[Nicogene]

Right now the only way to use it is linking everything statically, as also is reported in the readme, I think we can close it

[traversaro]

I think eventually we should think of producing/hosting the compiled version of the .dll in the release (I guess asking people that use Creo do use CMake/Visual Studio/vcpkg would be a great source of possible problems), but probably we can track this in another issue.