[vtkusers] Tutorial for newbies for installing VTK on Intel Mac

[Mike Jackson]

Start clean by blowing away Cmake, VTK, and Tcl/Tk.

Make sure you have installed the latest version of the Apple Developer
tools. This would be Xcode version 2.4. (Developer.apple.com). This package
has all the compilers and tools that you will need.


Now untar/ungzip the sources for Cmake into a directory located at the
following location:
/Users/Shared/
Open a terminal.
"cd" into the Cmake directory, Something like:
 [mjackson at Thor:~]$ cd /Users/Shared/ cmake-2.4.3
[mjackson at Thor:~]$ ./configure
... That will spit out a bunch of stuff.....
[mjackson at Thor:~]$ make
... That will spit out more stuff....
[mjackson at Thor:~]$  sudo make install
... Enter your admin password.. Then it will spit out some more stuff.

The default installation is in /usr/local/  which is fine on OS X.
This concludes the installation of Cmake

VTK:
  Untar/gzip VTK into the same /Users/Shared directory
Open a terminal:
[mjackson at Thor:~]$  cd /Users/Shared/
[mjackson at Thor:~]$ mkdir vtk502
[mjackson at Thor:~]$ cd vtk502
[mjackson at Thor:~]$ ccmake ../VTK
.. This will start the curses based Cmake program where you will choose
which options to use while building...
  The important selection is which GUI environment to build: Cocoa, Carbon
or X-Windows.
  Build cocoa if you are building Objective-C/Objective-C++ applications
otherwise turn this OFF
  Build with Carbon if you are using C++ to build a GUI otherwise turn this
OFF. ( if you are going to use Qt I would assume that this needs to be ON)
  Build with X-Windows if you are targeting X-Windows in your gui app.

Turn ON shared Libraries.
Turn ON rpath

Some people turn on Testing and examples. I don't.
Download the documentation from the same page that you downloaded the source
from.

After you have made your selections, type the "c" key to "configure". When
theat is complete, type the "g" key to generate the make files. If "g" is
not available, type the "c" key again until "g" is available.

If typing "g" is successful then ccmake will exit and leave you back at a
command prompt.

[mjackson at Thor:~]$ make -j 2
.. This will use 2 concurrent build threads to build VTK. If you are on a
Mac Pro Quad Processor you could probably use "make -j 6" and be OK.

Go get a cup of coffee.. In about 10-15 minutes VTK will be compiled. 25
Minutes on a Mac Book Pro.

This concludes the Building of VTK. You don't have to install anything at
this point as the Rpath that is set in the libraries will make sure all the
dylibs can be found.

I have never used or installed Tcl/Tk. Someone else is going to have to pick
up the instructions at this point.

 I know that Paraview has its own distribution of Tcl/Tk and VTK. You might
try that.. 

Mike Jackson



On 9/24/06 4:15 PM, "Matthieu Masquelet" <gtg540e at prism.gatech.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am now the proud owner of an Intel iMac and it looks like it is not
> going to be easy to build VTK (my ultimate goal being on using
> MayaVi). I'm willing to spend some time on this to understand how it
> works and why not write a little tutorial on it to guide newbies like
> me through the installation of CMake, Tcl/Tk and VTK. Please assume
> that I don't know much when trying to explain me what I should do.
> 
> I've played around trying to follow some old tutorials found on the
> Web and now I have several non-working directories with various
> flavours of CMake, VTK, etc...
> So what should I do to start clean?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Matthieu Masquelet
> Graduate Research Assistant
> Computational Combustion Laboratory
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> gtg540e at prism.gatech.edu
> Ph: 404-894-1409
> 
>