Copyright (c) 1993-2005 Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, Bill Lorensen
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  The Visualization Toolkit, An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics (Third Edition)
  by Will Schroeder, Ken Martin and Bill Lorensen.
  Kitware, Inc.,
  ISBN 1-930934-07-6
  http://www.kitware.com/products/vtktextbook.html

  The VTK User's Guide (VTK 4.2 Edition)
  Kitware, Inc.,
  ISBN 1-930934-08-4
  http://www.kitware.com/products/vtkguide.html

The Visualization Toolkit can be built on UNIX, PC (Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP), and Mac OSX Jaguar (or greater) systems. VTK uses CMake to generate its build system. To build VTK one must first install CMake version 2.0 or higher. CMake may be downloaded from http://www.cmake.org/HTML/Download.html. The instructions below cover the basics of running CMake for VTK under the assumption that CMake is already installed. See the CMake web page for details on intalling and running CMake.

Compiling VTK requires a complete VTK source tree. Running VTK tests requires a complete VTK data tree. Now is the time to extract the source and data archives if one has not done so already. These instructions assume there is a directory "VTK" containing the source code and optionally a sibling directory "VTKData" containing the data.

Building with CMake

CMake must be run to generate a build system for VTK. The build system may be placed either in the VTK source tree (an in-source build) or in a separate binary tree (an out-of-source build). We strongly encourage use of out-of-source builds because they make it easy to have multiple builds with different configurations sharing the same source tree. Once a single in-source build has been created it is the only build tree that can be associated with that source tree. A source tree may not be used both for an in-source build and an out-of-source build, but any number of out-of-source builds may share a source tree that does not have an in-source build. Having multiple out-of-source builds is particularly useful for installing VTK on multiple architectures using a single source tree on a shared disk.

CMake provides both a command-line tool and interactive interfaces. Advanced users may wish to use the command-line tool but here we document the CMake interactive interface for each platform:

• Windows
  Run the CMakeSetup dialog to get started. It must be executed from an environment configured to run the compiler to be used. In the case of the Visual Studio IDE no special environment is needed and CMakeSetup can be started from its icon. In the case of a Visual Studio NMake, Borland C++, or MinGW build the CMakeSetup dialog should be executed from a command prompt with the appropriate environment set.

  The dialog prompts for the location of the source and binary trees. There may also be prompt for the build system generator to be used ("Build For:"). Once these are set then CMake is ready for a first pass at configuring the VTK build system. Use the "Configure" button to initiate this process. If there was no earlier prompt for the build system generator a separate dialog will appear during the first configuration step to prompt for generator selection. After a while the dialog will present a set of configuration options. See below for details on the meaning of each of these options. After setting the options as desired press "Configure" again to make another pass at configuring VTK. New options may appear when earlier options are adjusted. Keep adjusting options and pressing "Configure" until the desired configuration is reached. Finally press the "Generate" button to actually generate the build system.

  Now that the build system has been generated the corresponding native tools can be used to build VTK. In the case of the Visual Studio IDE simply run it and load the VTK workspace or solution file from the binary tree specified in the CMakeSetup dialog. Select and build the ALL_BUILD target. In the case of a Visual Studio NMake, Borland C++, or MinGW build use the corresponding make tool (nmake, make, and make, respectively) from the command line.

• UNIX / Cygwin / Mac OSX
  CMake should be run from the command line on these platforms. The current working directory should be set to the desired binary tree location in which the build system should be generated. One command-line argument is used to specify the location of the source tree. CMake will usually choose the system C and C++ compilers automatically but it can be told to use specific compilers through the "CC" and "CXX" environment variables.

  A typical in-source build for VTK might look like this:

  $ ls -d VTK
VTK/
$ cd VTK
$ ccmake .
$ make


  A typical out-of-source build for VTK might look like this:

  $ ls -d VTK
VTK/
$ mkdir VTK-build
$ cd VTK-build
$ ccmake ../VTK
$ make


  In the above examples the call to ccmake may be replaced by

  $ env CC=/your/c/compiler CXX=/your/C++/compiler ccmake /path/to/VTK


  in order to tell CMake to use specific C and C++ compilers. Setting the environment in this way will only change the compilers the first time CMake is run for a specific build tree. Do not attempt to change the compiler of an existing build tree. Instead one should create a separate build tree for each desired compiler.

  The ccmake tool is a curses-based dialog that may be used to interactively configure VTK. When it appears press 'c' on the keyboard to run the initial configuration of the VTK build system. Eventually a set of configuration options will appear. These may be edited using the arrow-keys and the ENTER key for navigation. See below for details on the meaning of each of these options.

  Once the options have been set as desired press 'c' again to reconfigure. New options may appear when earlier options are adjusted. Keep adjusting options and pressing 'c' until the desired configuration is reached. Finally press 'g' to actually generate the build system. Now that the build system has been generated just run make or gmake to build VTK.

  NOTE: The ccmake curses dialog is the most commonly used interactive interface for CMake on UNIX-like platforms, so these instructions assume it is available. Some system administrators may not have installed curses in which case ccmake will not be available. On these platforms one may use the command "cmake -i" in place of ccmake and follow the on-screen instructions to configure VTK. A last resort is to use the command-line interface to cmake, but that is beyond the scope of this document. See CMake documentation for further details.

Configuration Options in CMake

VTK is a large toolkit providing a wide variety of functionality. Several configuration options are available to customize the VTK build system. These options are configured through an interactive CMake interface as described above. Note that not all options are available on all platforms, and some options are available only when other options are set to a particular value.

The interactive CMake interface provides brief documentation for every option. Some options have more meaning than can be described in one sentence, so additional documentation is provided here:

• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
  

  Sets whether the compiled VTK libraries will be shared libraries or static libraries. When linking executables against static libraries the needed symbols will be copied from the libraries into the executables enabling them to run without access to the original libraries. When linking executables against shared libraries references to the symbols are placed into the executables. This has the advantage that many executables can share a large library without producing many copies of its code.

  Shared libraries have the disadvantage that they must be found at runtime in order for an executable to run. Each operating system supporting shared libraries has a component known as the dynamic loader. This component is responsible for finding the shared libraries needed by an executable when it is run. In order to run VTK executables from the build tree when using shared libraries one may need to help the dynamic loader find the libraries (usually the bin subdirectory of the build tree).

  On Windows, the dynamic loader will look for shared libraries in the directory containing the executable, in directories listed in the PATH environment variable, and in some system directories. Since VTK places all of its executables and libraries in the same directory nothing needs to be set to get them to run. However, when one builds outside projects against VTK the PATH environment variable must be set to point at the directory containing the VTK shared libraries.

  On UNIX-style platforms, the dynamic loader will use an environment variable such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH (Linux and many UNIX systems) or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH (Mac OSX) to look for shared libraries. In order to run VTK executables from the build tree one must set the appropriate environment variable to point at the directory containing the VTK shared libraries. The same environment setting must be used for running outside projects build against the shared VTK libraries.

• VTK_WRAP_TCL
  

  Enable/Disable automatic generation of VTK bindings in the Tcl language. In order to build the Tcl-based VTK interpreter one will need to have Tcl and Tk version 8.2 or newer. Look to http://www.tcl.tk for information about getting Tcl and Tk. To turn on Tcl wrapping, set VTK_WRAP_TCL to ON during the configuration process. One may then have to set the values for Tcl/Tk include directories and libraries during the next CMake configure iteration. If there is more than one version of Tcl installed on the computer, make sure all the TCL_* and TK_* configuration options are set consistently to use the proper version. This is especially important when Cygwin is installed because the Cygwin Tcl will not work for a native Windows VTK build and a Windows Tcl will not work for a Cygwin VTK build. When building the Tcl/Tk wrappers on Cygwin one must also install the Cygwin sources for Tcl/Tk and set TK_XLIB_PATH to "/usr/src/tcltk-20030901-1/tk/xlib" or the corresponding directory for one's Cygwin Tcl version. See Wrapping/Tcl/README for details on using the Tcl wrappers once they are built.

• VTK_WRAP_PYTHON
  

  Enable/Disable automatic generation of VTK bindings in the Python language. In order to build the Python-based VTK interpreter one will need to have Python installed. Look to http://www.python.org for information about getting Python. To turn on Python wrapping, set VTK_WRAP_PYTHON and BUILD_SHARED_LIBS to ON during the configuration process. One may then have to set the values for Python include directories and libraries during the next CMake configure iteration. If there is more than one version of Python installed on the computer, make sure all the PYTHON_* configuration options are set consistently to use the proper version. This is especially important when Cygwin is installed because the Cygwin Python will not work for a native Windows VTK build and a Windows Python will not work for a Cygwin VTK build. In order to use Tkinter with VTK-Python make sure that the Tcl/Tk libraries that are set correspond to the same version used by Tkinter.

  Note that the VTK-Python modules are now installed by default via 'make install', which is a change from previous VTK versions. The automatic python module installation is highly configurable. The Wrapping/Python/README.txt file documents the installation procedure and the VTK-Python modules.

• CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
  

  When VTK is installed all files are placed in a directory structure rooted at the directory specified by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

---

Installation

Installing VTK from a source distribution requires first that it be compiled in a build tree. See the compilation section above for details. Once VTK has been compiled in a build tree one may build the install target to actually put VTK in an installation tree. If VTK was built using a CMake Makefile generator then this is done by running "make install" from the top of the build tree. If VTK was built using a CMake project file generator (such as Visual Studio), then building the INSTALL project from inside the IDE will install VTK. The installation process will install all files in a directory structure rooted at the directory specified by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

  1) Download the data at ftp://public.kitware.com/pub/vtk/VTKData.tgz

  2) Checkout the data from CVS using the following commands:
     cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@www.vtk.org:/cvsroot/VTK login
        (there is no password...just press enter)
     cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@www.vtk.org:/cvsroot/VTK checkout VTKData

  vtk mace.tcl