Documentation/4.0/Developers/Build Instructions

The build system for Slicer4 is being developed during the second half of 2010. The goal is to provide a cross-platform build system that allows developers to quickly install and configure the multiple packages.

Where Slicer3's build system relied on a custom build script called getbuildtest, new features added to CMake, partly driven by slicer's requirements, allow porting of the scripts to rely on more on native CMake functionality with the benefit that build script is more modular and general purpose.

Prerequisites

• Download (and if required compile) Qt - Use one of the link provided below:

	Linux		Mac				Windows
			Tiger, Leopard		SnowLeopard
	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits	64bits		32bits	64bits
Qt source link	4.6.2				4.7 beta		4.6.2
Qt binary link	4.6.2	4.6.2	4.6.2		4.7 beta		4.6.2 (vs2008)	-

• How to build Qt ?

Configure options common to all platform:

Check our different tutorials:

• Build Qt on Windows

Using the Qt Designer on Windows requires that the Slicer and CTK widget plugins are in the same mode than Qt. If Qt was compiled in Release mode (default), Slicer would have to be compiled in Release mode as well. However if Qt is compiled in Debug mode only, Slicer has to be compiled in Debug too. When Qt is in "Release and Debug" mode only the Release version of Designer.exe is generated, Slicer would have to be compiled in Release. So for developers, the Debug mode is recommended, this is why we detail the compilation of Qt below.

• • 1/ Use a windows extracter to unzip the [#Prerequisites|Qt zip archive], don't use cygwin unzip it.
  • 2/ launch the msvc2008 command prompt (MSVC08->Tools->Visual Studio 2008 CommandPrompt)
  • 3/ build with configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2008 -debug
    • Note: the option -prefix doesn't work on Windows.
    • Note: According to [1] Qt does not support msvc2008 on windows xp. However, running configure.exe with no -platform argument seems to work. If you run configure with the -platform argument first by mistake, and if configure -clean doesn't work, then you may need to start from a fresh extraction from the .zip archive before running configure.exe again with no -platform, unless you can run nmake with the config clean target.
  • 4/ run vcvars32.bat first (required only if you use a regular command prompt, not the one in 2/).
  • 5/ run nmake.
  • Note: building with webkit support requires that src/3rdparty/webkit/WebCore/tmp/moc/{debug,release}_shared/mocinclude.tmp be removed. else you will get linker errors like QNetworkReplyHandler.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: virtual struct QMetaObject const * __thiscall WebCore::FormDataIODevice::metaObject(void)const (?metaObject@FormDataIODevice@WebCore@@UBEPBUQMetaObject@@XZ)
  • Node: If you encounter the following error api\qscriptextensionplugin.h(43): Error: Undefined interface,, delete the files \src\script\tmp\moc\debug_shared\mocinclude.tmp and \src\script\tmp\moc\release_shared\mocinclude.tmp and restart nmake. For more info, please see QTBug 6470].
• Build Qt on Linux

Downloading the binaries of Qt works fine with Linux, you do not have to compile Qt manually. The following descriptions are given for people who want to compile Qt anyway.

mkdir Qt
mkdir Qt-build
cd Qt
wget http://get.qt.nokia.com/qt/source/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.6.2.tar.gz
tar xvfz qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.6.2.tar.gz
cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.6.2
echo yes | ./configure -prefix ../../Qt-build -debug-and-release -opensource  -no-qt3support 
make -j 16
make install

• • Note: On a 64 bit system, you may have to add -arch x86_64 to the Qt configure command line (?)

• Build Qt on Mac

Same as Linux. Use "-arch x86_64" for a 64 bit build on SnowLeopard.

Step1 : Checkout slicer sources using subversion

For example:

cd MyProjects
svn co http://svn.slicer.org/Slicer3/trunk Slicer3

Step2 : Configure slicer project using either ccmake or cmake-gui

The grids displayed below summarized the available options.

Using ccmake:

mkdir Slicer3-SuperBuild
cd Slicer3-SuperBuild
ccmake -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE:FILEPATH=/home/myself/qt-4.6.2/qt/bin/qmake ../Slicer3/SuperBuild

Using cmake-gui

Where is the source code: C:/MyProjects/Slicer3/SuperBuild
Where to build the binaries: C:/MyProjects/Slicer3-SuperBuild

Set of options and supported plateforms:

Description	Options				Platform
	Slicer3_USE_KWWIDGETS	Slicer3_USE_PYTHON	Slicer3_USE_QT	Slicer3_USE_PYTHONQT	Linux	Mac	windows
Kww-Python DEFAULT	ON	ON	OFF	OFF	Y	Y	Y
Kww-NoPython	ON	OFF	OFF	OFF	Y	Y	Y
KwwAndQt-Python	ON	ON	ON	OFF	Y	N	Y
Qt-NoPythonQt	OFF	OFF	ON	OFF	Y	Y	Y
Qt-PythonQt	OFF	OFF	ON	ON	Y	Y	Y

What is the difference between Python and PythonQt build ? Todo ...

Step3: Configure, Generate the solution files and Build

make can be run from the top-level bin directory Slicer3-SuperBuild (where ccmake was used to configure), or from Slicer3-SuperBuild/Slicer3-build. In the first case, the build script will run update on the dependency libraries (but not for Slicer source code -- for that you need to manually update the Slicer3 directory). In the second case, there will be no updates, so this approach is convenient when making local development in Slicer.

Platform Notes

• On windows and mac python gets rebuilt every time you type make.
• You currently need to manually set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH (mac) and related paths to run the executable Slicer3-SuperBuild/Slicer3-build/bin/SlicerQT

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=<path/to>/Slicer4-SuperBuild/CTK-build/CTK-build/bin:<path/to>/Slicer4-SuperBuild/CTK-build/CMakeExternals/Install/lib