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 more on native CMake functionality with the benefit that build script is more modular and general purpose.

Prerequisites

• Install git version >= 1.6.5
  • Download Git
  • On linux, install git: sudo apt-get install git. If git --version is inferior to 1.6.5, then:sudo dpkg --install git-core_1.6.5-1~bpo50+1_amd64.deb
  • On Windows, msysgit is advised. Using TortoiseGit is a plus.
• Linux prerequisites (need to confirm)
  • gcc
  • gcc-c++
  • libX11
  • libX11-devel (libX11-dev on Ubuntu 7.04)
  • libXt-devel (libXt-dev on Ubuntu)
  • opengl/mesa (libgl1-mesa-dev on Ubuntu) (and libosmesa6-dev on Ubuntu)
  • glu (libglu1-mesa-dev on Ubuntu)

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

	Linux		Mac		Windows
			Tiger	Leopard, SnowLeopard
	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits
Qt source link	4.7			4.7	4.7
Qt binary link	4.7	4.7	4.7	4.7	4.7 (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.

• • Note: You need to install the libQtWebkit-devel package too

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/Slicer4/trunk Slicer4

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

The grids displayed below summarizes the available options.

Recommended: Using ccmake to compile QT only version with PythonQT support:

mkdir Slicer4-SuperBuild
cd Slicer4-SuperBuild
ccmake -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE:FILEPATH=/home/myself/qt-4.6.2/qt/bin/qmake -DSlicer3_USE_KWWIDGETS:BOOL=OFF -DSlicer3_USE_PYTHON:BOOL=OFF -DSlicer3_USE_QT:BOOL=ON -D Slicer3_USE_PYTHONQT:BOOL=ON ../Slicer4/SuperBuild

For developers, set the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to Debug.

More flexible option: Using ccmake (Additional configuration has to be set by using the flags shown in the table below):

mkdir Slicer4-SuperBuild
cd Slicer4-SuperBuild
ccmake -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE:FILEPATH=/home/myself/qt-4.6.2/qt/bin/qmake ../Slicer4/SuperBuild

More flexible option with GUI: Using cmake-gui (Additional configuration has to be set by using the flags shown in the grid below)

Where is the source code: C:/MyProjects/Slicer4/SuperBuild
Where to build the binaries: C:/MyProjects/Slicer4-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

After configuration, start the build process in the Slicer4-SuperBuild directory:

make -j<NUMBEROFCORES>

On Mac OS X Snow Leopard and PythonQT enabled, there might be a complain about python-build/lib/libpython2.6.dylib not found. Please follow this workaround and then re-start the build process:

cd python-build

cmake -P ../python_configure_step.cmake
cmake -P ../python_install_step.cmake

What is the difference between Python and PythonQt build ? The Python option is an older slicer3 flag used to turn on the KWWidgets-based Python option and should not be used with Qt. PythonQt refers to the PythonQt Project which is being integrated with Slicer4. Leave both options OFF for best results (PythonQt is still being debugged)

Step3: Configure, Generate the solution files and Build

Two projects are generated by ccmake/cmake-gui: the top-level bin directory Slicer3-Superbuild and the subdirectory Slicer3-Superbuild/Slicer3-build. The first project in Slicer3-Superbuild manages all the external dependencies of Slicer (VTK, ITK, Python, ...). Running make (or building the solution file on Visual Studio) will update and build the external libraries and if successful will then build the subproject Slicer3-build.
The second project in Slicer3-Superbuild/Slicer3-build is the "traditional" build directory of Slicer. Running make will only build Slicer (the external libaries are considered built and up to date).
To build Slicer the first time, run make in Slicer3-Superbuild. After local changes in Slicer (or after an svn update on the source directory of Slicer3), only running make in Slicer3-Superuild/Slicer3-build is necessary.
Warning, a lot of space disk is necessary to compile Slicer (>10Go on Windows)

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