The release() function is used to free underlying C resources and should be called after all processing that requires C code is done. release() Will not affect the returned Go structs like Scene or Mesh. Returned Go data will remain valid.

asig.X functions call into C and therefore should not be used on released objects. Calling any asig.X function after release() is undefined.

While asig functions should NOT be called on a Scene (or its objects) after they have been released, methods on structs (e.g. myScene.XYZ, myMesh.ABCD()) are safe even after release.

Developing assimp-go

We link against static assimp libraries that are built for each platform and added to the asig/libs package. Depending on the platform we select one of them and link against it when doing go build.

The general steps are:

Copy assimp includes into asig/assimp
Copy zlib.h, zconf.h and irrXML.h into asig/zlib and asig/irrxml respectively.
Copy static libraries into asig/libs
Generate the wrappers using swig -go -c++ -intgosize 64 asig/asig.i
Add #cgo LDFLAGS: -L ./staticLibs -l zlibstatic -l IrrXML -l assimp at the top of the 'C' import in asig.go

Note: When dealing with static libraries the compiler will probably (e.g. MinGW does this) ignore lib suffixes and .a/.lib suffixes. So if your lib name is libassimp.a you need to pass it to CGO as -l assimp, otherwise you will get an error about library not found.

For platform specific steps:

Windows:

Note: You must compile with the same C/C++ compiler you use with Go (e.g. if you use MinGW with Go, then compile assimp with MinGW by sepcifying the correct -G option)

Note: If you get compilation errors with things like File too big or can't write 166 bytes to section then cmake isn't detecting you are using MinGW, so add this flag -D CMAKE_COMPILER_IS_MINGW=TRUE

Now assuming you are using MinGW on windows:

Clone wanted release of assimp and run cmake CMakeLists.txt -D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF -D ASSIMP_BUILD_ZLIB=ON -D ASSIMP_BUILD_ASSIMP_TOOLS=OFF -D ASSIMP_BUILD_TESTS=OFF -G "MinGW Makefiles" in the root folder
Run cmake --build . --parallel 6
Copy the generated *.lib (or *.a) files into asig/lib