How to build VA binaries for the Plugin

This is a short HowTo for updating the Linux VA binaries (i.e., libVABase.so and libVANet.so).

❗ You first need to build Vista (VistaBase, VistaAspects and VistaInterProcComm is needed) accordingly to the guide below. If you already did that for an older VA version, you can keep using that.

• Create a folder on Linux filesystem (e.g. VA_build)
• Clone/copy the CMakeList.txt of VA into it.
• Copy/clone VANet and VABase in the appropriate versions to this folder (e.g., both at tag v2020.a)
• To not have .so and .so.1.0.0 and .so.1 files, edit VABase/CMakeLists.txt and VANet/CMakeLists.txt and add set_target_properties(VABase PROPERTIES NO_SONAME 1) and set_target_properties(VANet PROPERTIES NO_SONAME 1) respectively
• mkdir build
• cd build
• ccmake ..
• hit c for configure (ignore errors for now)
• deactivate ITA_VA_WITH_BINDING_CS
• toogle to advanced with t and then add to CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS: -static-libstdc++ (see Troubleshoots below).
• hit g for generate
• make -j
• Now in the build/lib folder the libraries can be found, copy those to unreal-va-plugin\Source\VALibrary\lib.

You will have to set the ViSTA build tools to be setup correctly:

• clone VistaCMakeCommon
• export VISTA_CMAKE_COMMON=[path to cloned VistaCMakeCommon]
• also clone ViSTA and build it, of it VistaBase, VistaAspects and VistaInterProcComm is needed.

Troubleshoots:

• If some auto```constructs generate compiler warnings: add -std=c++11toCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS``
• If string symbols are undefined, link against Unreal's stdlib: add -nostdinc++ -I "/home/av006de/Unreal/UnrealEngine_4_26/Engine/Source/ThirdParty/Linux/LibCxx/include/c++/v1/" to CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS
• If libstdc++.so cannot be loaded at cooking: add -static-libstdc++ to CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS
• If dlopen failed: ../lib/libVABase.so occurs you need to:
  • Check directly in Linux with readelf -d libVANet.so | grep NEEDED whether libVABase.so is not linked directly into libVANet.so but as ../lib/libVABase.so which cannot be found for packaged builds.
  • To change that on Windows, e.g., get https://github.com/david942j/patchelf.rb for Ruby
  • patchelf --print-needed libVANet.so (to see what they link to on Windows
  • patchelf --replace-needed "../lib/libVABase.so","libVABase.so" libVANet.so
  • also needed for libVistaAspects.so and libVistaInterProcComm.so if you need to rebuid those