Building Inviwo

Learn to build Inviwo from source on your system

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How to build Inviwo

Windows

Dependencies

You will need at least (we recommend using latest versions)

CMake one of the latest versions. Also add the cmake binary to your PATH.
Qt5 binaries >= 6. Make sure you get the build for the 64 bit version for you Visual Studio version. Also add the Qt binary directory (something like Qt/5.12.1/msvc2017_64/bin) to your PATH.
Python (optional) is recommended in case you would like to use Inviwo from Python, write Processors in Python, or perform batch operations. The easiest is to use the regular Python distribution.

Note: NumPy is required, pip install numpy or conda install numpy is sufficient.

We strongly advice against using Anaconda as Anaconda adds itself first to the PATH variable, which meanst that its Qt will be used instead of your Qt installed above. In case you would like to use conda, we instead recommend Miniconda as it does not include Qt. If you are forced to use Anaconda the following workarounds may make it work. Only if you are using Anaconda for your Python environment:

Add an environment variable CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH and set it to your Qt dir, e.g., Qt/6.5.0/msvc2019_64 (will ensure that CMake finds your Qt instead of Anaconda’s).
Ensure that your Python environment is active before running CMake/Visual Studio. This can be done by starting the Anaconda Prompt, running conda activate and starting CMake/Visual Studio from the prompt.

Building

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/inviwo/inviwo The --recurse-submodules is necessary to pull dependencies.
Generate build pipeline (e.g. Visual Studio project): Open CMake (see the CMake GUI tutorial for more instructions on its usage), enter the source path and the preferred build directory (outside the inviwo directory!) and hit configure. You can then select the desired Inviwo modules (IVW_MODULE_*) and configure again. When selecting the compiler, make sure to select the correct Visual Studio version that you use on 64-bit. 32-bit is not supported.
(Optional) To add external Inviwo modules, add those in IVW_EXTERNAL_MODULES in the format of C:/Inviwo/otherrepo/modules;C:/mysite/myrepo/mymodules; Use front slashes and no space between modules. Configure again. External modules are developed in the inviwo modules repository.
Hit Generate and open the project in your IDE.

Note: Unless you specifically need to debug the application, we recommend setting the build mode to RelWithDebInfo for good performance, while still getting reasonable stacktraces for debugging and error reporting.

When using a multi-configuration generator (like Visual Studio and most IDEs) you may want to adjust your build mode manually to RelWithDeb(Guide for Visual Studio), since it defaults to Debug at first, which has a large impact on the performance. If you use a single-configuration generator, you can control the build mode using CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE in CMake.

If you computer becomes unresponsive while building you can reduce the number of parallel build projects/cores: - Number of cores per project: In CMake set IVW_MULTIPROCESSOR_COUNT (the number of cl.exe processes per project). - Visual Studio: Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Build and Run->maximum number of parallel project builds - Qt Creator: In Projects->Build & Run->Build->Build Steps->Details->CMake arguments add -j <number of cores>, e.g. -j4

Common Errors

Everything compiles but at runtime you get “failed to load QT symbols dll load errors”

Make sure that the same Qt version used for building is found when running the application. A common source of this error is that Anaconda is installed, which includes another Qt version and has added itself to the PATH environment variable. Make sure that the Qt version used for building is before the Anaconda path in the PATH. We have observed a similar problem with certain LaTeX distributions, so if the issue remains, try to move the LaTeX entry in your PATH behind your Qt version as well.

Everything compiles but at runtime you get “failed to load python.dll”

Add the path to the Python bin folder to your PATH environment variable. You can find the path to the Python binary in Visual Studio by right clicking on the inviwo-module-python3 project and go to “Properties->Linker->Input->Additional dependencies”.

Everything compiles but at runtime you get runtime error / Unhandled Exception in pybind11/embed.h. For example “Unhandled exception at 0x00007FFE786A284E (ucrtbase.dll) in Inviwo.exe: Fatal program exit requested”

This may happen when the PYTHONHOME variable is not set or is incorrect. Check your system settings to see if it is correctly pointing to your python installation found by CMake. If you do not have the PYTHONHOME variable you should set it. It should point to the root folder of your python installation, e.g C:/python37 or C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Shared\Anaconda3_64 (if you installed Anaconda with Visual Studio). To know which python installation inviwo uses you can check the output from the configuration pass in CMake, in the very beginning of the log it prints which python interpreter it found and will use.

Linux

Dependencies

You will need at least (we recommend using latest versions)

CMake one of the latest versions.
Qt binaries >= 6. Make sure you get the build for the 64 bit version of gcc or clang. Make sure to add the Qt folder to the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH environment variable. Example: export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/home/user/Qt/6.5.0/gcc_x64/ Note: We highly recommend installing Qt with the official Qt installer instead of your package manager for Inviwo. While you can certainly get the versions from package managers to work, we experienced issues in the past with missing components and compiler incompatibilities.

For Ubuntu you can use the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake cmake-qt-gui git freeglut3-dev xorg-dev

The first two commands add the Kitware APT Repo and the appropriate signing key, the third and fourth update your package manager and download the dependencies.

Python (optional)

On Linux the easiest way is to use the system python, which will usually be detected by CMake by default. If you wish to use a different Python environment, e.g. from an Anaconda environment, you’ll need to specify the Python3_ROOT_DIR in CMake (before first configure!) and set it to your conda environment. Note that it may in some cases be necessary to run the compile or the binary from a command line with the conda environment activated.

Building

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/inviwo/inviwo The --recurse-submodules is necessary to pull dependencies.
Generate Build pipeline (e.g. Makefile, Ninja): Open CMake (see the CMake GUI tutorial for more instructions on its usage), enter the source path and the preferred build directory (outside the inviwo directory!) and hit configure. You can then select the desired Inviwo modules (IVW_MODULE_*) and configure again. If CMake cannot find Qt, make sure you adjust your CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH as described above.
(Optional) To add external Inviwo modules, add those in IVW_EXTERNAL_MODULES in the format of C:/Inviwo/otherrepo/modules;C:/mysite/myrepo/mymodules; Use front slashes and no space between modules. Configure again. External modules are developed in the inviwo modules repository.
Hit Generate and open the project in your IDE.

Note: If you are using a single-configuration generator (like Make or Ninja) to build Inviwo, you can control the build mode with the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE attribute in your CMake config.

When using a multi-configuration generator (like Visual Studio and most IDEs) you may want to adjust your build mode manually, since it probably defaults to Debug at first, which has a large impact on the performance.

Unless you specifically need to debug the application, we recommend setting the build mode to RelWithDebInfo for good performance, while still getting reasonable stacktraces for debugging and error reporting.

Mac

Dependencies

You will need at least (we recommend using latest versions)

XCode
CMake one of the latest versions.
Qt binaries >= 6.
Python (optional) is recommended in case you would like to do use Inviwo from Python, write Processors in Python, or perform batch operations. See further (important!) instructions about Python for Mac below.

You can use the brew package manger to install the dependencies using the following commands:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew install --cask cmake
brew install qt 
brew install git

Paste the commands into the Terminal and run them. The first command installs brew (not necessary if already installed) and the following commands install cmake (–cask is needed to also install the cmake GUI), qt (used for the GUI), and git (to checkout the code).

Python (optional)

Ensuring that the correct Python is found can be a bit complicated (read more about brew Python here). If you do not care about using different Python versions it is probably easiest to simply install Python 3 via brew:

brew install python3
pip3 install numpy

If you wish to use a different Python environment, e.g. from an Miniconda environment, you’ll need to activate the conda environment from the Terminal and run cmake/XCode from there:

brew install --cask miniconda
conda init "$(basename "${SHELL}")"
conda install numpy

These three lines install miniconda, sets up the Terminal to use conda, and installs numpy to the active conda environment. We strongly advice against using Anaconda as Anaconda adds itself first to the PATH variable, which means that its Qt will be used instead of your Qt installed above. In case you would like to use conda, we instead recommend Miniconda as it does not include Qt. Note that CMake may not be able to find the appropriate Python environment unless it has been started from a command line with the conda environment activated:

conda activate
cmake-gui

Building

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/inviwo/inviwo The --recurse-submodules is necessary to pull dependencies.
Generate build pipeline (e.g. XCode project): Open CMake (see the CMake GUI tutorial for more instructions on its usage), enter the source path and the preferred build directory (outside the inviwo directory!) and hit configure. You can then select the desired Inviwo modules (IVW_MODULE_*) and configure again.
(Optional) To add external Inviwo modules, add those in IVW_EXTERNAL_MODULES in the format of /Inviwo/otherrepo/modules;/mysite/myrepo/mymodules; Configure again. External modules are developed in the inviwo modules repository.
Hit Generate and open the project in your IDE.

Mac Packaging/Installer

To package Inviwo into an installer you will need to enable CMake option IVW_PACKAGE_INSTALLER and then click Configure/Generate. From XCode, select the package target (you may need to create a new scheme via menu item Product->Scheme->New Scheme).

Packaging on Mac requires that you use a Qt version built from source instead of web installers or brew. Otherwise, you will get errors such as these you will need to use :

can't open file: @rpath/QtDBus.framework/Versions/A/QtDBus (No such file or directory)

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