This document contains a full listing of the included commandline tools as well as how to use them.
All production level programs are located in mrv/bin, all testing utilities can be found in mrv/test/bin.
All examples are given using linux shell semantics, windows users usually only have to substitute ‘/’ with ‘\’ and prepend the python.exe interpreter which has to be used to launch the programs.
This tool will setup the environment to allow running MRV and derived projects together with Maya Standalone within your system’s python interpreter, mayapy, or maya.bin. The system interpreter will be used by default and is expected to be in your path. On Linux and OSX, it must be named python2.x. On Windows, the python interpreter’s executable is expected to be python2x.**x** can be 4,5 and 6 and depends on the maya version you would like to run.
If no python interpreter can be found in your path, mrv will fallback to using mayapy.
The first optional argument passed in to the tool names the Maya version you would like to run, these can be 8.5 to X, where X denotes the latest release. If no maya version is specified, the latest installed one will be launched.
All additional arguments are passed to the python interpreter or maya.bin directly.
It can easily be used to write standalone tools with maya support.
Sample Usage:
$ # start a python interpreter with maya 2011
$ bin/mrv 2011
$ # show the tools help
$ bin/mrv --help
$ # show the help of the underlying python interpreter
$ bin/mrv 2011 -h
Prepares the environment of a default maya session using maya.bin to enable mrv support. All additional arguments will be interpreted by maya.bin:
$ # start a default maya 2011 session
$ bin/mrv 2011 --mrv-maya
$ # start maya 8.5 in prompt mode
$ bin/mrv --mrv-maya -prompt
By default, mrv will try to use the system’s python interpreter first, and mayapy if it could not be found. This can be problematic if the system’ python interpreter is not suitable to run the given maya version. In that case, you may force mrv to use maya’s builtin python interpreter using the --mrv-mayapy flag. All remaining arguments will be passed to mayapy.
Enforce Mayapy Sample Usage:
$ # start mrv for maya 2010 using mayapy
$ bin/mrv 2010 --mrv-mayapy
There may be occasions when you want to use mrv facilities which are not specific to maya at all, hence the mrv.maya module is not used. In this case you may specifiy which code to run using the default python -c and -m arguments which are expected to come before any other non-mrv arguments, or by providing a python module to execute. All remaining arguments will be set to sys.argv which can be read by your code subsequently.
Use the current python interpreter without maya support:
$ bin/mrv --mrv-no-maya -c "import mrv; print mrv" -given -via=sys.argv
$ bin/mrv --mrv-no-maya my-script.py -arg-for-script=1
Note
The mrv command will use execv on non-windows system, but use spawn on windows to workaround some issues. This implies that scripts on linux/osx can natively use the mrv program, standardchannels are handled automatically. On windows the spawned process will be attached with all standardchannels of the parent python process, but its questionable whether this has the intended effect.
mrvs main tasks are to adjust the python``sys.path`` to include mrv and to possible prepare the environment to start maya standalone inside the interpreter.
To allow derived projects, which use MRV as a subproject, to be handled as well, the info module takes a key role in providing information about the project. To mrv it is no difference whether it prepares the environment for MRV or a derived projects as it relies in the info module in both cases.
When searching for the info module, it tries to import it at the current working directory, moving upward the path until one is found. As the info module is supposed to be located in the project root, it must be possible to import the actual project by its root_package name. If this is the root package of a derived project, it is supposed to adjust sys.path once more to allow mrv to be imported as well.
This allows derived projects to be started and used through mrv as long as your current working directory hints at it.
This program is effectively nothing more than a customized IPython shell which provides a fully initialized MRV development environment. Additionally, it will attach all available functions to all types to aid auto-completion of methods - under normal conditions methods are only added to a type as you call the function.
imrv can be seen as the python version of maya -prompt.
An introduction to using the tool can be found in Development:
$ # get ipython with a fully initialized MRV in Maya 2011
$ imrv 2011
Note
Will only work if you have the ipython package available in your python installation.
A MRV specific replacement for the nosetests utility which supports all arguments of nosetests, whereas the first argument may be the Maya release you want to run the tests in.
Sample Usage:
$ # run all tests in Maya 2011
$ test/bin/tmrv 2011
$ # run the given tests in Maya 2008
$ test/bin/tmrv 2008 test/test_path.py test/maya
$ # show all arguments supported by nosetests
$ test/bin/tmrv --help
Generates a coverage report using nose coverage which must be available in your local nose installation. If you specify a package name, only code that ran within the given package will be included in the coverage report. It defaults to your project’s root package.
As it is essentially a reconfigured nose, it supports all nose specific arguments as well:
$ # get a coverage report after running all tests in Maya 2011
$ test/bin/tmrv 2011 --tmrv-coverage
$ # show the report in a browser
$ firefox coverage/index.html
Note
On Windows when using cmd.exe, paths to the test modules and packages to run must be absolute. For example, the test/maya becomes something like “c:projectsmrvtestmaya” on windows. Additionally, an absolute path must be specified as opposed to the non-windows os’s which take the current directory as hint for where to find tests.
In order to test user interfaces, you need to run the actual maya executable in UI mode, that is without ‘-batch’ or ‘-prompt’ specified. Using the --mrv-maya``flag that ``mrv provides, you will get a maya UI session setup to run the specified nose tests with the given options:
$ # Run all UI tests in maya 2011
$ test/bin/tmrv 2011 --mrv-maya test/maya/ui
$ # Run all tests, including coverage, within maya 8.5
$ test/bin/tmrv 2011 --mrv-maya --tmrv-coverage
Note
nose must be installed for mayapy in order for the UI tests to work.
This tools allows automated full regression testing by running all tests for all available or specified maya versions. Use the --help flag for additional options.
Sample Usage:
$ # Run all tests for all available maya versions
$ test/bin/tmrvr
$ # Run all tests only for the given maya versions
$ test/bin/tmrvr 8.5 2008
If you would like to shorten the regression test, you can skip the single tests which perform only one tests per maya session as they have to be run in an isolated fashion. In case you decide to do so, the final result of the regression test will be failure though. Single tests are identified by a filename matching test_single_*.
$ # Run all tests, but skip the single tests $ test/bin/tmrvr –skip-single
If set, tmrvr will launch tmrv using mayapy instead of the system’s native python interpreter.
Note
The first of the three - characters in ---mrv-mayapy is just required for the documentation generator not to barf, and must be left out when using the flag.
If set, test cases will be searched in the given directory. Otherwise the projects root/test directory will be used instead.
The set of tools and scripts required to do release is further described in the Distribution Manual