Installation

Prerequisite is a C++11 compiler and an installed development version of VTK. So far, the code been tested with VTK 7.1, VTK 8.1 and VTK 8.2. With few #ifdefs, on still can make it running on VTK 6.3. Build uses the standard CMake way. E.g. to configure with clang, use

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ CXX=clang++ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installprefix> ..
$ make

Versions of CMake prior to 3.02 do not do automatic configuration for C++11, so in this case you need to issue

$ CXX=clang++ CXXFLAG=-std=c++11 cmake ..

You will find the compiled examples in build/examples. find_package from another project will find vtkfig build tree via the cmake registry. The shared library libvtkfig.so is created in build/src and can be copied to some directory on LD_LIBRARY_PATH, where it can be found by the Julia package VTKFig.jl.

Alternatively, perform in the build directory

$ make install

to install the includes and libraries in a directory defined by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX.

Testing + running examples

Check OpenGL support on your desktop/laptop:

$ build/src/vtkfig-openglinfo

If the output is very terse (without notes on OpenGL v2 support, z-buffers etc), you probably will be bound to a slow software rendering path. Fixing this depends on your VTK installation and your graphics hardware.

Run example code

$ build/examples/example-simplexcontour2d

Similarly, you should be able to run any other example in build/examples.

Run example code in multiprocess mode

This feature is rather experimental.

$ src/vtkfig-exec localhost examples/example-simplexcontour2d

You can add the -ssh flag and replace localhost by another computer in the network.

Usage in another project

Use the usual cmake mechanism. In CMakeLists.txt, add

find_package(VTKFIG 0.20 QUIET)

and add VTKFIG_INCLUDES and VTKFIG_LIBRARIES to corresponding variables.

In particular, these will draw in all necessary vtk dependencies.