[SOLVED] Setting a convenient environment for SOFA development

[sharif]

Dear all,

I am rather new to Sofa development. Before start developing, I usually try my best to set up the best possible developing environment based on others experiences. I know that Sofa supports a myriad of IDEs and Operating Systems, and I have tried a number of them, i.e. Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2012 and Ubuntu 14.04 with QT. I have had a hard time to get SofaCuda work on my Ubuntu and hardly succeeded to do so. In addition, I greatly prefer Ubuntu on Windows as it is a more convenient developing environment than Windows (at least for me). In this regard, I appreciate any suggestions, especially those from Sofa native developers.
BTW. which operating system do you recommend in terms of SofaCuda development? Are there any specific compatible VGAs which can be gotten to work painlessly?

Regards

[Hugo]

Dear Sharif,

I am pleased to read that you started with SOFA. Indeed, succeeding to make it work with SofaCuda from scratch is far from being trivial. Congratulations to you !
About choosing the “optimal” development environment, I must say it is extremely “developer-dependent” ! But so that you know many SOFA developers are working under Linux. Ubuntu is therefore a good choice.
What do you mean exactly by VGA ?

Best regards,

[sharif]

Dear Talbot,

Thank you for your encouragement. In fact, implementation of SofaCUDA is a much greater job than reading manuals and compiling it, and what I did was nothing more than compiling it and trying to get it to work. It is great to know that many Sofa developers normally use Linux as the “incubator”. It can be a sign that bugs may occur in Windows or Mac OS more frequently (I know that developers try hard to keep sofa bug-free in all operating systems, but that is a possibility.) As a secondary choice to Ubuntu, do you also recommend Arch Linux?
Compiling SofaCUDA took me much time, and at last it was only possible by downgrading the version of CUDA SDK and NVIDIA card driver. So by VGA, I meant VGA card (or Video Card). I want to ask if there is any unwritten rules about SofaCUDA and its compatibility with different Video Cards, CUDA SDK versions, etc.
I also have a suggestion. Already, there is enough documentation for Sofa users and Sofa developers to start working with this framework. However, for more advanced usage of the framework and a steeper learning curve, more accurate documentation and tutorials is needed. This way, sofa developers can leverage a greater enthusiastic community of developers and more expedited growth of the framework.

Sincerely
Sharif

[Hugo]

Dear Sharif,

About your first question: many developpers are actually using ArchLinux, here in Strasbourg.
About SOFACuda, there no unwritten rules, and Sofa should be compatible with all Cuda versions.
Finally, about your suggestion, by the end of this summer, the development of SOFA should be improved in this way: widden the use of SOFA, making it more robust and professional. Thank you again for your interest in SOFA.

Cheers,

Hugo

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