Installing the Maya Developer Toolkit on a Linux Environment

The Maya Developer Toolkit, also referred to as the Maya devkit, is used to create custom plug-ins, scripts, and applications that extend Maya's capabilities.

Requirements

The Maya devkit requires CMake and Red Hat Developer Toolset 6.1 with gcc 6.3.1.

CMake is available to download from https://cmake.org/download/.

The Red Hat Developer Toolset can be installed using the yum package management tool. See the Red Hat Developer Toolset website for more information.

Download and Set Up the Developer Toolkit

The Maya devkit is available from The Maya Developer Center.

Scroll to the bottom of the Maya Developer Center page to find the devkit packages. Click on the appropriate link to download the devkit.

Unzip and unarchive the devkit package to your $HOME directory, creating the $HOME/devkitBase/ directory.
Create the $HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/ directory. This is where you will store your own plug-ins and scripts.
Create the plug-ins, scripts, and icons directories under your $HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/ directory.
Modify your $HOME/maya/<version_number>/Maya.env file to define path variables that point to the directories that contain your plug-ins and scripts. Use the Maya.env file that corresponds to the version of Maya you are developing for.
```
MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/plug-ins/
MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/scripts/
XBMLANGPATH=$HOME/devkitBase/plug-ins/icons/
```
Note:

The $HOME/maya/<version_number>/ directory is created when Maya is launched for the first time. Launch Maya if you do not see this directory.

Maya will use these paths to automatically discover the plug-ins and scripts in these directories. If these paths are not set, you will need to open Maya's Plug-ins Manager and manually browse to the location of the plug-ins and scripts to load them.
Set the DEVKIT_LOCATION environment variable to point to $HOME/devkitBase/ and set the MAYA_LOCATION environment variable to point to /usr/autodesk/<maya_version>/.

Important:

If you have more than one version of Maya installed, set these variables in the terminal where you will be building your plug-ins and applications. Setting them in your shell confuguration file can cause a conflict with other versions of Maya that are installed on your system.