[vtkusers] AppImage packaging: GLEW could not be initialized

Mon Jul 11 16:06:14 EDT 2016

glew failing to initialize typically means that opengl has not been
initialized, specifically by creating an opengl context. e.g. the
this->ContextId is 0. Such as around calls to

glXCreateContextAttribsARB

in vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow.cxx.

FWIW I do not believe we support the Intel HD3000 on Linux for OpenGL2. You
would need either mesa with software rendering, a more recent intel CPU, or
a dedicated graphics card and driver.

Ken

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 3:54 PM, Elvis Stansvik <
elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com> wrote:

> I now have a minimal example I can share:
>
>     https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1a2u6qVxaL7S2d3OF9uR3Q2amc
>
> This is an AppImage (hello.appimage), built just the way I build my
> application. It shows a sphere in a QVTKWidget. The download is 62 MB since
> the VTK bundled in the image includes debugging symbols.
>
> It would be great if other people could download and execute the image on
> their distros, to see if it runs. I've tested it only on Kubuntu 16.04
> (where it works) and Arch Linux (where it crashes like described in
> previous mails).
>
> Specifically it would be _very_ interesting if someone with
>
> 1. Arch Linux, or
> 2. a somewhat old Intel graphics chipset, or (even better)
> 3. both of the above,
>
> could try running it, and see if they can reproduce my crash (failure to
> initialize GLEW).
>
> I'm attaching the sources and scripts (hello.tar.gz) from which I built
> this example. If you want to build it yourself, just type "make" in the
> extracted directory. All you need is Docker and Make, everything else is
> taken care of inside a CentOS 6 Docker container.
>
> Many thanks in advance.
>
> Elvis
>
> 2016-07-11 17:27 GMT+02:00 Elvis Stansvik <elvis.stansvik at orexplore.com>:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> In exploring different deployment options, I'm now trying to create an
>> AppImage of a VTK+Qt application. For those who don't know, AppImage is a
>> packaging format where the application, including (almost) all of its
>> dependencies are put into a self-extracting ISO image called an AppImage.
>>
>> Doing this takes quite a bit of manual work, but if you do things
>> correctly and build the image on a good base system (I'm using CentOS 6),
>> the image should run on a multitude of distros.
>>
>> I've had some success: The resulting image runs on e.g. Ubuntu Xenial.
>>
>> I'm now trying it on my Arch Linux laptop (not a common/easy target for
>> AppImages, but I'd like to make it work since I run it personally), and get:
>>
>> ERROR: In /tmp/VTK-7.0.0/Rendering/OpenGL2/vtkOpenGLRenderWindow.cxx,
>> line 533
>> vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow (0x1e48140): GLEW could not be initialized.
>>
>> This is due to a glewInit() call failing during initialization of the
>> render window, and I've debugged it to the underlying call to
>> glGetString(GL_VERSION) in VTK's forked GLEW library returning NULL.
>>
>> Does anyone have an idea why this might happen? The VTK I'm using here is
>> configured as follows:
>>
>> cmake3 \
>>     -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
>>     -DVTK_Group_Qt=ON \
>>     -DVTK_QT_VERSION=5 \
>>     -DVTK_Group_Imaging=ON \
>>     -DVTK_Group_Views=ON \
>>     -DVTK_Group_MPI=OFF \
>>     -DVTK_Group_Tk=OFF \
>>     -DVTK_Group_Web=OFF \
>>     -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF \
>>     -DVTK_USE_SYSTEM_LIBRARIES=ON \
>>     -DVTK_USE_SYSTEM_LIBPROJ4=OFF \
>>     -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
>>     ..
>>
>> And it uses the OpenGL2 backend.
>>
>> It was built inside a CentOS 6 Docker container on a Kubuntu 16.04 host
>> with HD 4400 Intel graphics adapter. The target system is an older laptop
>> with up-to-date Arch Linux and a weaker HD 3000 Intel graphics adapter.
>>
>> Now, packaging apps that use OpenGL is a bit tricky, because you can't
>> bundle e.g. libX11, libGL and some other libraries that are dependant on
>> the user's graphics adapter/environment.
>>
>> The libraries that I've chosen to _not_ bundle are:
>>
>>     libz.so.1
>>     libm.so.6
>>     libSM.so.6
>>     libICE.so.6
>>     libX11.so.6
>>     libXext.so.6
>>     libXt.so.6
>>     libstdc++.so.6
>>     libgcc_s.so.1
>>     libc.so.6
>>     libpthread.so.0
>>     librt.so.1
>>     libGL.so.1
>>     libdl.so.2
>>     libuuid.so.1
>>     libxcb.so.1
>>     libxcb-dri3.so.0
>>     libxcb-present.so.0
>>     libxcb-randr.so.0
>>     libxcb-xfixes.so.0
>>     libxcb-render.so.0
>>     libxcb-shape.so.0
>>     libxcb-sync.so.1
>>     libxshmfence.so.1
>>     libglapi.so.0
>>     libXdamage.so.1
>>     libXfixes.so.3
>>     libX11-xcb.so.1
>>     libxcb-glx.so.0
>>     libxcb-dri2.so.0
>>     libXxf86vm.so.1
>>     libdrm.so.2
>>     libXau.so.6
>>     libXdmcp.so.6
>>
>> This may be a little too liberal, and it could be that I should be
>> bundling some of these. But it seems to work fine since the AppImage runs
>> without problem on Kubuntu 16.04.
>>
>> The application also runs fine if I build VTK and the application
>> "normally" on the Arch host and run it (using OpenGL2 backend), so the
>> graphics adapter should be capable enough. It's just when I try to run the
>> CentOS 6-built AppImage on the Arch host that it fails.
>>
>> The application essentially just creates a QVTKWidget and renders a
>> volume into its rendering window.
>>
>> I saw that one (perhaps likely?) reason for glGetString(GL_VERSION)
>> returning NULL is that initialization of the GL context failed (or wasn't
>> fully done yet). If this is the case, does anyone know where I can debug
>> this further in VTK? Where is the OpenGL context in VTK set up when using
>> QVTKWidget + OpenGL2 backend?
>>
>> Finally: Has anyone else tried packaging VTK applications as AppImages?
>>
>> I know ParaView is provided as a prebuilt Linux binary with VTK bundled,
>> so I can imagine the ParaView folks has ran into some issues like this?
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any advice.
>>
>> Elvis
>>
>
>
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Chairman & CFO
Kitware Inc.
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