Documentation/Nightly/Developers/Build Instructions/Prerequisites
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Contents
PREREQUISITES
For all systems be sure git-lfs is properly installed for use with VTKv9 (required for VTKm checkout)
As of early 2018, Slicer migrated to Qt5. See instructions at this labs page for the new requirements: https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Labs/Qt5-and-VTK8
The prerequisites listed below are required to be able to configure/build/package/test Slicer.
Linux
- CMake >= 3.13.4
- Git >= 1.7.10
- Svn >= 1.7
- Qt 5.11: tested and recommended
- To build Slicer: install Qt using the distribution package manager.
- To package and redistribute Slicer: download and execute qt-unified-linux-x64-online.run, install Qt, make sure to select qtscript and qtwebengine components.
- GCC suite
Debian
- Debian squeeze/wheezy/testing(jessie) users, start by pasting the following lines in a terminal
sudo apt-get install subversion git-core git-svn sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev libxt-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libosmesa6-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libfontconfig-dev libxrender-dev libncurses5-dev sudo apt-get install cmake sudo apt-get install qt-sdk
Ubuntu
Common Prerequisites
sudo apt-get install subversion git-core git-svn
sudo apt-get install make gcc g++ libx11-dev libxt-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libfontconfig-dev libxrender-dev libncurses5-dev
sudo apt-get install libosmesa6-dev # Only for Ubuntu < 14.04.3
- On Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS, attempting to install libosmesa6-dev results in an error.
The following packages have unmet dependencies: libosmesa6-dev : Depends: libosmesa6 (= 10.1.3-0ubuntu0.4) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
For more details, see Bug 1424059.
- Slicer compiles successfully without that package, but VTK_OPENGL_HAS_OSMESA is disabled.
- For Qt5.5 on Ubuntu 16.04
sudo apt-get install libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev
CMake
- Open a terminal and copy the command reported below
- Download stable version of CMake and extract the archive:
sudo apt-get install curl mkdir ~/Support && cd ~/Support curl -O https://cmake.org/files/v3.13/cmake-3.13.4-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz tar -xzvf cmake-3.13.4-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
- Create symbolic links into
~/bin
mkdir -p ~/bin for name in cmake ctest cpack ccmake cmake-gui; do ln -s ~/Support/cmake-3.13.4-Linux-x86_64/bin/$name ~/bin/$name done
- You MUST download the standard CMake binary because the distributed version of CMake cannot be used to build slicer.
See here for more details.
CentOS
See instructions reported in qt5-centos7/Dockerfile
MacOSX
- XCode command line tools must be installed:
xcode-select --install
- El Capitan is what most developers use.
- CMake 3.12.2 is recommended. Check the minimum required CMake version here
- Qt 5: tested and recommended.
- For building Slicer: download and execute qt-unified-mac-x64-online.dmg, install Qt 5.10, make sure to select qtscript and qtwebengine components.
- For packaging and redistributing Slicer: build Qt using qt-easy-build
MacOSX 10.9.4 (Mavericks)
(1) Make sure to install this update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1754
(2) Use CMake 3.12.2 - it is known to be working and is supported (if you want to use CMake already installed on your system, 2.8.12.2 is known to work on Mac OS X 10.9.5)
- Mac Os X >= 10.5 (Leopard)
- CMake >= 2.8.9
- For Mac Os X >= 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and/or recent XCode >= 4.5.X - CMake >= 2.8.11 is required. See http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.11-Darwin64-universal.tar.gz
$ curl -O http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.11-Darwin64-universal.tar.gz $ tar -xzvf cmake-2.8.11-Darwin64-universal.tar.gz --strip-components=1
$ CMake\ 2.8-11.app/Contents/bin/cmake --version cmake version 2.8.11
- Git >= 1.7.10
- Svn >= 1.7
- XCode (for the SDK libs)
- After installing XCode, install XCode command line developer tools:
xcode-select --install
- XQuartz - For Mac Os X >= 10.8 (Mountain Lion) install XQuartz (http://xquartz.macosforge.org) to get X11 (no longer a default in OS X).
- Qt 4 >= 4.8.5. We recommend you install the following two packages:
- Download and install qt-opensource-mac-4.8.6-1.dmg
- Download and install qt-opensource-mac-4.8.6-1-debug-libs.dmg
- For more details here
Mac OSX 10.11 (El Capitan)
XCode up to version 7 is known to work for Slicer compilation. XCode 8 breaks things on several levels for now. Remember to install XCode command line tools (see above) if a reinstall for XCode is needed.
The standard Qt4 installers fail on this version and the 4.8.6 source code won't build. But as described on the slicer-devel mailing list it is possible to install the homebrew version of qt4 which patches it to work on El Capitan (see below).
- Install the OS, Xcode, and XQuartz (see MacOSX 10.10 above)
- Install Qt4 by running the following two commands:
brew install qt4 xcode-select --install
- TCL does not build correctly on El Capitan as of 2015-12-03, so when building Slicer turn `Slicer_USE_PYTHONQT_WITH_TCL` off.
Mac OSX 10.12 (Sierra)
Similar to 10.11 (El Capitan), there are new issues with Qt4 (caused by Phonon). The GitHub user Cartr offered a patch to the brew team, and even though it was not integrated (the homebrew team decided to stop patching their recipe to encourage people to use Qt5), he turned his formula into a tap that can be installed (see below).
Follow instructions for 10.11 (Installing Xcode, XQuartz, run without TCL) but install Qt4 like shown below instead:
brew install cartr/qt4/qt xcode-select --install
Confirmed with Xcode:
- Version 8.1 (8B62) and cmake version 3.4.20151021-g8fbc8e
- Version 8.3.3 and cmake 3.5.2
Windows
Common Prerequisites
- CMake >= 3.0 (3.7.1 recommended)
- Git >= 1.7.10
- CMake must be able to find git.exe and patch.exe. If git is installed in the default location then they may be found there, but if they are not found then either add the folder that contains them to PATH environment variable; or set GIT_EXECUTABLE and Patch_EXECUTABLE as environment variables or as CMake variables at configure time.
- Subversion (SVN) client: any SVN client that has command line tools
- SlikSvn , or
- TortoiseSVN - make sure you install Command line client tools component (disabled by default)
- NSIS (optional): Needed if packaging Slicer - Click here to download. Make sure you install the language packs.
- Qt:
- Qt5 recommended and officially supported. Download qt-unified-windows-x86-online.exe and install Qt along with qtscript and qtwebengine components. For building with VS2015, Qt version 5.10.x or older is required. For more details, read step-by-step guide.
- Qt 4: will still work until Slicer-4.10 but not officially supported. See details here.
Tested and recommended build environment
- VS2015
- Make sure you enable installation of component Programming languages / Visual C++ / Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015 (in some distributions, this option is not enabled by default)
- Installation of Cumulative Servicing Release for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 (KB3165756) is required on some older VS2015 distributions
- Qt 5.10
- CMake >= 3.3.1
Experimental/deprecated build environments
- Visual Studio 2017 (Community or any other edition) with VS2015 build tools (tested, works well)
- When configuring Visual Studio installer, enable installation of component VC++ 2015.3 v14.00 (v140) toolset for desktop
- Visual Studio 2015 toolset must be set in CMake: Optional toolset to use (argument to -T) need to be set to v140
- Visual Studio 2013 with Update 5 (deprecated, should still work)
- As of commit 7160260: Slicer compilation is successful, with some caveats.
- Build Qt 4.8.7 with SSL support using qt-easy-build.
- Note: be sure to pick the version of qmake that you built in the earlier steps if applicable (CMake may pick a different qmake, for example if installed with anaconda)
- VS2012 (untested, may work)
- Use a desktop version such as Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop and remember Visual Studio 2012 Update 2). Do not use Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8. You must install Windows SDK, otherwise CMake will not even find the C compiler during configure. In CMake, choose Visual Studio 11 Win64 as generator.
- VS2010 (untested, probably does not work)
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Any edition)
- Make sure to build or install:
- Qt 4.8
- Make sure to install:
- VS2008 (untested, probably does not work)
- Microsoft Visual Studio 9 2008 (Any edition). VS Express 2008 with SP1 direct link (functional as of Jan 11, 2014)
- Make sure to install SP1: Click here to download SP1 and click here to understand the motivation.
- Make sure to patch VS2008 using the script fix-vc9-redist-manifests.ps1
- Cygwin (untested, probably does not work)
- Cygwin suite (building with cygwin gcc not supported, but the cygwin shell environment can be used to run git, svn, etc).