debug libs on windows

[rob rein]

Hi Everybody,

I was just wondering what the reason was for not releasing a debug versions of SimTKcore on Windows?

[Jack Middleton]

The problem we ran into when we tried to release a debug version of Windows was that Microsoft does not have a redistributable for debug libraries. This means that only users with the exact version of Visual Studio, including the same patches, as what we used to build SimTK could use it. We tried compiling with the release with debug info option but this caused numerous problems when users tried to step through the code in the debugger. We are still looking for a solution for releasing a debug version on Windows but have not found one yet.

[rob rein]

Thanks for the reply.
So I suppose the only way would be to build them myself.

Regards
Robert

[Jack Middleton]

Yes, building all the libraries using the same Visual Studio is the only way to be sure the debugger will work. Note, that if you decide to build your own SimTK you do not have to rebuild the SimTKlapack library because that does not have as many dependencies as the other libraries.

[rob rein]

Cheers,

Worked all out of the box.
I have one suggestion for the CMakeLists.txt regarding the part where SimTK_INSTALL_PREFIX and SIMTK_SDK are defined.

Instead of

IF(NOT SimTK_INSTALL_PREFIX)
...
PATHS
"C:/Program Files/SimTK"
)

you could use:

IF(NOT SimTK_INSTALL_PREFIX)
...
PATHS
"$ENV{PROGRAMFILES}/SimTK"
)

This way CMake starts with a more reasonable default as for example on my german Windows programmes are installed on C:\Programme.

Regards
Robert

[Jean-Olivier Racine]

I second the motion. Another example is under Vista 64, where the 32 programs are installed under Program Files (x86).

[Michael Sherman]

Thanks, Rob. I fixed up all the SimTK core CMake files to use the %ProgramFiles% environment variable (really "registry entry") so that will be in the next release.

I filed bug report #752 (now closed) so we can keep track of this fix.

Regards, Sherm