Documentation/4.0/Developers/Build Instructions

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Back to Slicer 4

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

  • CMake version >= 2.8.2
  • 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)
    • git version >= 1.6.5
      • Download Git
      • 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
  • Windows prerequisites
  • Download and if required compile Qt - Use one of the links provided below to download QT:
Linux Mac Windows
Tiger Leopard, SnowLeopard
32bits 64bits 32bits 64bits 32bits 64bits
Qt source link 4.6.3 4.6.3 4.6.3 (vs2008)
4.7.3 (vs2010)
Qt binary link 2010.05 2010.05 4.7.0 20010-05 4.6.3 (vs2008) -

If you would like to compile QT, see Build Instructions for QT.


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

Recommended: Use cmake-gui to compile using default options If you downloaded the Qt binary then qmake will be detected and all paths will be set automatically. If you built your own Qt (e.g. in Debug mode for use with the designer) set the QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE in cmake-gui.QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE should be set to the path of the qmake.exe file, which is inside the bin directory (for example, ./QT/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.3/bin/qmake.exe).

For linux/mac with ccmake:

mkdir Slicer4-SuperBuild
cd Slicer4-SuperBuild
ccmake -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE:FILEPATH=/home/myself/qt-4.6.3/qt/bin/qmake ../Slicer4

On linux and mac: for developers, set the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to Debug.


Note to Windows users Windows doesn't support path longer than 260 characters, please make sure that the total path name of your Slicer-build directory is no longer than 75 characters ( for example "c:\work\Slicer\Slicer-Superbuild" (32 characters) is fine)

Step3: Configure, Generate the solution files and Build

Two projects are generated by ccmake/cmake-gui: the top-level bin directory Slicer4-Superbuild and the subdirectory Slicer4-Superbuild/Slicer-build. The first project in Slicer4-Superbuild manages all the external dependencies of Slicer (VTK, ITK, Python, ...). To build Slicer the first time, run make (or build the solution file in Visual Studio) in Slicer4-Superbuild, which will update and build the external libraries and if successful will then build the subproject Slicer-build.
The second project in Slicer4-Superbuild/Slicer-build is the "traditional" build directory of Slicer. After local changes in Slicer (or after an svn update on the source directory of Slicer), only running make (or building the solution file in Visual Studio) in Slicer4-Superuild/Slicer-build is necessary (the external libaries are considered built and up to date).
Warning, a lot of space disk is necessary to compile Slicer (>10GB on Windows)

  • Linux / Mac:

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

make -j<NUMBEROFCORES>


  • Windows:

Open Slicer4-SuperBuild\Slicer.sln (or Slicer-4.0\Slicer4-SuperBuild\Slicer-build\Slicer.sln) in Visual Studio and build the ALL_BUILD project.

Step4: Run Slicer4

Run the launcher in Slicer4-SuperBuild/Slicer-build/Slicer (Slicer.exe on windows)

Platform Notes

  • Linux Ubuntu: if you have odd rendering artifacts, try disabling visual effects (System/Appearance/Visual Effects)