This app serves as a quick way to get started when doing Toolkit App development. If you want to get up and running quickly, follow these simple steps:
This repo has got several branches, illustrating slightly different workflows:
- the
masterbranch contains a standard multi app which runs in all engines. - the
shotgun_multi_selectbranch shows how to get started if you want to create a shotgun specific app where you can select multiple objects in Shotgun and pass this selection into the app.
First of all, fork this repo. You can fork it to your own github accout or fork it to
an internal git server, that's totally up to you! At this time, make sure you also
rename it to something sensible. We recommend the naming convention tk-ENGINE-APPNAME,
where ENGINE is set to multi if the app can run in more than one engine. For example,
if you are working on a rigging tool in maya, you may want to name it tk-maya-characterposer.
Now, first things first - before starting development, let's install the App. First, create a development sandbox for your project by going to the pipeline configurations page in Shotgun and click select "Clone" on the menu when right clicking on the primary pipeline configuration. This will give you a private place to do development and you wont be disturbing the production.
With your development sandbox there will be a specific tank command that you can use to address
this particular configuration. Open a shell and navigate to your sandbox. Now run the install app
command. When you install an app, you need to choose an environment and an engine. The engine is
the application you will be running, so either tk-maya, tk-nuke etc. The environment is a
collection of tools that you want to run against a specific work area. In our default
configuration, when working with Shots, the environment is called shot_step and
when working with Assets, the environment is called asset_step.
> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank install_app shot_step tk-maya user@remotehost:/path_to/tk-multi-mynewapp.git
This will find the latest git tag and install that into your setup. If you want more information about how the install_app command works, just run it without any options.
Now, to test that the App was installed correctly, go to a Shot task in Shotgun and launch maya from your development sandbox. Toolkit now tracks this repository and if you create new tags, these will be detected by Toolkit's update system.
Now clone your forked repo locally, so that you have the code on disk somewhere. Next, we need
to switch toolkit so that it doesn't track the latest tag in the git repo, but instead looks
at your local code. For example, if you have your locally checked out code in /Users/john.smith/dev/tk-multi-mynewapp,
you would do the following:
> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank switch_app shot_step tk-maya /Users/john.smith/dev/tk-multi-mynewapp
Make changes to your code. Since you are now running tookit with a dev setup, there is a reload option on the menu. Clicking this will reload all apps and configuration, making it easy and quick to iterate.
When you are ready to release, tag up a version in git. Name it for example v1.0.0.
Then, switch back to git mode. Toolkit will pick up the tag with the higest number
and use that - your dev area is no longer used by the system.
> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank switch_app shot_step tk-maya user@remotehost:/path_to/tk-multi-mynewapp.git
Lastly, push your configuration changes to the Primary production config for the project.
> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank push_configuration