New device documentation about anari-sdk HOT 3 CLOSED

Thanks! I haven't had much time to sink into my anari device lately but I'll definetly go through that file.

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Hi! This is definitely a gap in SDK documentation right now, so I'll do my best to direct you here.

Even though you're not planning on using helium, the helide device is still a reasonable reference point for some of the other miscellaneous things that device implementations need in order to work in the SDK:

• ANARI_DEFINE_LIBRARY_ENTRYPOINT (Example here) is what anariLoadLibrary() looks for when loading your library dynamically. You can probably just copy that file and change names to fit your library.
• The jsons are only used for generating device/object info data for anariGetDeviceExtensions, anariGetObjectSubtypes, anariGetObjectInfo, and anariGetParameterInfo. Those are about listing what extensions you implement that are in the core spec and then creating definitions for any extensions you add beyond the spec. The best strategy to use is to adapt an example json combined with CMake infrastructure for invoking the Python generation scripts (example here).
• The main component you must implement is DeviceImpl -- yes it's a C++ pure-virtual class, but you don't have to use any C++ in order to implement it. The stuff helium does is inject a class layer in between DeviceImpl and yours to handle some generic stuff (object lifetimes, array data + lifetime, parameter transactions, etc.), but DeviceImpl itself is straight 1:1 with the public C API. If you understand the C API from the docs, then you should easily be able to implement DeviceImpl with whatever you want to do....it's ultimately up to you.

Let me know if you have any other questions, as there's plenty of things to talk about when starting a device from scratch!

from anari-sdk.

FYI I just merged a README that explains the various aspects needed to get a device implementation going (viewable here)....I hope that helps! Let me know if anything is unclear, thanks!

from anari-sdk.