[vtkusers] Wrong CMake configuration for VTK+Qt-Projects in Visual Studio

[John Drescher]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Rocco Gasteiger
<post at rocco-gasteiger.de> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
>
>
> I use CMake to configure a VTK+Qt project in Visual Studio 9 on a Windows 7
> machine. According to information in this mailing list and other examples I
> create my own CMakeLists.txt file and it works…almost! I can build and link
> my project correctly against VTK but if I start my program within (or
> outside of) Visual Studio I get a error that some (I think all) VTK dlls are
> missing e.g. vtkCommon.dll.  In my environment variables I already set a
> path (in the Path-variable or VTK_DIR) to the binary folder of the compiled
> VTK sources. Within this folder I have a debug and release folder.
>
>
>
> Currently, I can only resolve this behavior in one of two ways.
>
> 1.       I set the path in my environment variables to the debug or release
> folder and can run the program in debug or release mode.
>
> 2.       I set PATH=$(QTDIR)\bin;$(VTK_DIR)\$(OutDir) as entry in the
> debugging environment in the project properties (QTDIR was set in the
> environment variables too)
>
>
>
> But I think this manual effort is not necessary if I configure my
> CMakeLists.txt correctly. So I do something wrong and maybe somebody can
> help me.
>
> At the end of this mail you find the (shortened) content of my
> CMakeLists.txt file.
>

I use a build step to copy the Qt dlls to the build folder for Debug
and Release. I also build itk, and vtk statically. Eventually I could
build these as shared and update the build script below to copy those
dlls as well.


# Copy the needed Qt libraries into the Build directory. Also add installation
# and CPack code to support installer generation.
# this is a complete hack for Visual Studio to copy the Qt libraries.
if ( NOT Q_WS_MAC)
   if (DEFINED QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE)
       SET (QTLIBLIST QtCore QtGui)

       IF (MSVC)
           set(TYPE "d")
           FOREACH(qtlib ${QTLIBLIST})
             IF (WIN32)
               GET_FILENAME_COMPONENT(QT_DLL_PATH_tmp
${QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE} PATH)
               file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Debug)
               file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Release)
               file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/MinSizeRel)
               file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/RelWithDebInfo)
               INSTALL(FILES ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}${type}d4.dll
                   DESTINATION ./
                   CONFIGURATIONS Debug
                   COMPONENT Applications)
               INSTALL(FILES ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}4.dll
                   DESTINATION ./
                   CONFIGURATIONS Release
                   COMPONENT Applications)
               add_custom_target(ZZ_${qtlib}-Debug-Copy ALL
                           COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E
							copy_if_different ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}${TYPE}4.dll
                           ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Debug/
                           COMMENT "Copying ${qtlib}${TYPE}4.dll to
${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Debug/")
               add_custom_target(ZZ_${qtlib}-Release-Copy ALL
                           COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E
						   copy_if_different ${QT_DLL_PATH_tmp}/${qtlib}4.dll
                           ${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Release/
                           COMMENT "Copying ${qtlib}4.dll to
${PROJECT_BINARY_DIR}/Release/")
             ENDIF (WIN32)
           ENDFOREACH(qtlib)

       endif(MSVC)
   endif(DEFINED QT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE)
endif(NOT Q_WS_MAC)

John