My current task is to set up a working environment for an application using (static) Qt and VTK, under Windows 10.
I successfully installed the Qt 5.11.1 static and now want to build VTK. Any version of VTK does, as long as it is compatible to Qt 5.11.1, and the Qt Modules (VTK_Group_Qt) have to be build. For my version, I decided on VTK 8.1.1, but as said, any version would do.
I used the CMake GUI to configure VTK, using MinGW Makefiles (I use a MinGW64), which worked. Then I wanted to proceed generating the Makefile, having turned on VTK_Group_Qt. The paths and version of Qt were already correctly recognized:
Qt5Core_DIR C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5Core
Qt5Gui_DIR C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5Gui
Qt5Widgets_DIR C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5Widgets
Qt5_DIR C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5
Made sure that all of those exist. After that, I hit Generate and got the following error:
The imported target "Qt5::Core" references the file
"C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/.../qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase//mkspecs/win32-g++"
but this file does not exist. Possible reasons include:
* The file was deleted, renamed, or moved to another location.
* An install or uninstall procedure did not complete successfully.
* The installation package was faulty and contained
"C:/build_environment/qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5Core/qt5CoreConfigExtras.cmake"
but not all the files it references
Now, we see that it goes one folder upwards from qtbase and then into the very folder it currently is in, which of course is not a legitimate path. That is, for some reason it tries to go up and then down again, but not with the right amount of folders.
I could try to move the contents of my Qt installation so that the path would be legitimate, but I'd consider that to be pretty much of a smell. Fiddling around in a folder structure that should be correct is not what I understand to be a good solution. I'd rather be willed to change one of the .cmake files of Qt, but that would also be more of a makeshift approach than a real solution as far as I am concerned.
One thing I tried so far was to look at all the CMake variables (checking Advanced in the CMake GUI) in order to see if everything appear to be in order, and especially to see if that faulty path to mkspecs is to be found somewhere there. Found nothing of particular interest.
Does anybody have an idea what went wrong? Tell me if additional information is required. In parallel, I will try to build other versions of VTK, but I'm not too confident that this will solve the issue.
I found a solution which I want to present here, but I consider it a makeshift approach rather than an actual solution, and I hope to see a better answer.
I went to qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase/lib/cmake/Qt5Core/ and changed the file Qt5CoreConfigExtrasMkspecDir.cmake (after making a copy).
The original file contains a single line
set(_qt5_corelib_extra_includes "${_qt5Core_install_prefix}/.../qt-everywhere-src-5.11.1/qtbase//mkspecs/win32-g++")
which leads to the faulty path. I changed it to
set(_qt5_corelib_extra_includes "${_qt5Core_install_prefix}/mkspecs/win32-g++")
And it now works fine. Still, I don't feel good about having to change a file of Qt, since I consider the answer the question "Is this famous library at fault?" to be "Most likely I used it wrong."
A possible explanation would be that I used the wrong install prefix when configuring Qt, but shouldn't I be allowed to put any valid writeable path in there? Plus, the prefix is still in the cmake file and thus has some validity.
While this is an answer since it fixed the problem, I'd really like to read comments about what could have originally went wrong.
Related
What am I doing wrong?
1. I write some code in Qt Creator, it works.
2. I save all, copy the folder with all the files in it to another location for safekeeping.
3. Then I write more code. This additional code doesn't work and I've gone too far to undo it.
4. So I close Qt, delete that folder, move the earlier one back to where it was originally, and load the older version.
But Qt still gives me the same errors that the newer code gave me, and won't run. It seems to remember this newer (bad) code even though it no longer appears anywhere in Qt - and the problem persists over computer reboot. I feel I'm missing something very obvious, but Mr Google can't help at all.
Try Build->Rebuild all. Your IDE is probably caching some of the previous results for performance reasons. I had the problem once using Qt Creator, and it solved it for me.
Delete the build folder. All that the build system knows about is the built files being newer than your now even older sources*. So a build won't succeed since plenty of intermediate files are wrong.
By the way, you really should be using version control, not moving folder around. I suggest git via smartgit, but that's just my personal preference. It's effortless.
* A build system could remember the absolute timestamps of the source used in the build and rebuild if they change, not only if the sources are newer than the results.
I am having serious problems to compile a code in Windows (regard3d at http://www.regard3d.org). I have read so many post (two days blocked on this problem) here at stackoverflow and other sites, but without success.
The problem is that it needs wxWidgets. For that I am using MinGW. I have VS Community (the latest version). I run my CMakeLists.txt and everytime I get the message
Could NOT find wxWidgets (missing: wxwidgets_LIBRARIES wxwidgets_INCLUDE_DIRS)
I included the wxWidgets installation directory (which is C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0) in PATH variable (I restarted to it takes effect) and created the variable WXWIN (that also contains the installation directory).
The question: What can I do to solve it?
I think the problem is not building the wxWidgets, but make it be found my cmake. As mentioned, I built it using MinGW, thus I have the folder C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0\lib\gcc_dll and the folder C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0\include which contains two more folders named wx and msvc. I am using the following settings before call the cmake:
set wxWidgets_ROOT_DIR=C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0
set R3D_ALT_wxWidgets_INCLUDE_DIRS=include
set R3D_ALT_wxWidgets_LIBRARIES=lib\gcc_dll
set wxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=build\msw
I'm not very familiar with wxWidgets (so this should probably be a comment, but I can't comment because reasons......), but a quick hack that should work is just throwing the path to the library in LD_LIBRARY_PATH or including it by adding
CPPFLAGS += -L C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0\lib\gcc_dll -I C:\wxWidgets-3.1.0\include
to your makefile.
Failing that, you could explicitly set the environmental variables it's complaining about outside of the makefile.
Again, sorry, this should be a comment. It's not... If someone wants to copy it to a comment and delete this, that'd be grand.
Thank all of you. Solved! Yesterday I compiled both with MinGW and VS and settled the wxWidgets-3.1.0_INCLUDE_DIRS and it worked!
I'm lost here and I have no clue how to proceed. This is not a question about how to make my program work, this is a question about how to stop wasting my time.
My programming environment is Visual Studio 2013 on windows, in C++.
I use 3 libraries extensively, namely: boost (using dynamic linking), OpenCV, and Qt.
During the development, I have configured VS to look at those 3 libraries by default for include and .lib. I have also added the 3 folders containing all the dlls to my PATH environment variable.
It works, but it is sometime painful, let me explain you when.
First hassle: Anytime I have a LNK error telling me I miss a function, it is usually on OpenCV since it has only one include file referencing all the functions. I have to look at OpenCV's source code to see what module this function belongs to and to know what I must link my program to.
Second Hassle: When comes the time to deploy my application, I have to ship it with all the relevant dlls. To know which one I need, I open dependency walker and try to forget nothing, I have then to test it on a different computer because 102% of the time I have missed a couple, and then I have to configure my Installer generator to include all those one by one.
Third Hassle: To ease a little bit the process of configuring a new development machine, I have recently switched to NuGet. It is great, I add boost with a couple of clicks to any project. But now my boost DLLs are everywhere, I have one folder per boost library, and since there are dozens of those I can't even add them all at once to my PATH now, so I have to move them manually to the appropriate folder, and that is really not what I want to do with my not-so-precious-but-who-are-you-to-judge time
I have looked around and couldn't find any good practice regarding this issue, maybe because they are too obvious, or too specific to a particular setup.
How do you do? How would you do if you were me?
We put all our external dependencies in version control along with the code. This ensures that all code can build "out of the box" on any of our development machines and also ensures that for any given version of the code, we know exactly which dependencies is has.
The best way to check for missing dependencies is how have a good automated test suite, if you've got comprehensive converge then if your tests pass you must have deployed the required libraries.
In terms of linking to the appropriate libraries, unfortunately, that just sounds like an issue with the structure of OpenCV (I'm not familiar with OpenCV). I tend to use dumpbin under Windows and nm under Linux to easily grep for symbols when I get link errors with an unfamiliar library.
The situation is the following: I have the source code of one programm (lets call it programA) (written in C and C++), as well as the CMakeLists.txt and CTestConfig.cmake files. I already installed programA using CMake's graphical user interface and, as it is obvious, it worked. It created the .exe file (I'm working on Windows 7 OS).
The problem is that, right now, I've been asked to edit the program (and so, I must be able to edit the code and degugging it as changes are made). I also need to compile it but not in .exe anymore but in .dll so I can add it to a website we have.
I've read in forums that CMake can compile programA into a .dll if I need to, but as I would need to make some changes I consider that CMake debugging is not as useful and easy as using entirely VS. From the little I know from CMake language, the CMakeLists.txt is mainly used to check the OS of the user as well as adding some libraries in case they are not found.
I have to admit I have no idea in programming CMake directives, as I have been working with ASP.NET, C, C++ and C# mostly. Then, my idea is to try to work only in visual studio 2010 instead of using cmake as well, so once I have the program 'adapted' to VS and can be compiled just using VS, I'm ready to start my job. So the question I have is how can I perform the same task CMake did just using Visual Studio (Is there any way of implementing CMake directives in VS?), can VS compile by receiving as an argument something similar to that CMake.txt file (though it needs to be translated into another language)?
To skip the use of CMake I tried to copy the source code into a new project in VS. However as it does not use the CMake directives when compiling, it gives several errors, most of them related to the fact that some headers.h can't be found (cause they might be in a subfolder). And there are so many subfolders to add the paths to the predefined directories of search that it would take ages.
I'm sorry I can't be more precise in my explanation. I'm good at programming little projects on my own, but it's the first time I have to work on other's programm. Please don't hesitate to ask if anything was not properly understood
I would appreciate a lot any suggestion / advice /guidance you can give.
To make a dll, use add_library command and the SHARED keyword
add_library(mylib SHARED ${files})
this is easy with CMake, don't go back in visual that will be harder at the end
The Good News
Fortunately, cmake can generate VS Projects automaticaly for you (this tutorial s specific for OpenTissue, but Steps 1 to 3 should be the same for you).
The [not so] Bad News
Depending on the complexity of the project, VS Projects automaticaly generated by cmake can get pretty nasty, to the point of illegibility. It will, for example, hard link any library dependencies using the specific paths of your machine, so the project will most certainly not be portable across setups. In any case, that's the intended bahavior, because the primary idea of supporting this generator is simply making it work, thus allowing users to easily compile projects using MSVC, so there's not much you can do here. Nonetheless, it should work in your machine and will certainly be a great starting point for you, just create a project yourself from scratch copying the relevant parts out of the automatic generated version.
hey the title pretty much says it all. i have been trying different methods from internet sources, but whenever i try something goes wrong..this is where i got Box2D
in cMake, i get a bunch of errors when building it(i was going through the steps in the readme.txt, but onfortunately, theyre for Visual C++...)
so im wondering hot to set this up as i guess a library (.lib or .a) and use it in my project(my friend passed me his library and when i loaded it in and tried #includeing the box2D headers, they didnt read at all(i got a list of undefined errors) also his box2d was i believe made for linux/unix so i think thats the reason...)
if anyone can help provide some steps that would be nice.
thanks for reading.
Assumptions:
You have installed cmake.
You have installed Code::Blocks/MinGW to C:\codeblocks.
You have downloaded Box2D and extracted it to C:\Box2D_v2.1.2.
If any of those are wrong, modify the paths to match what you have.
Start->Run->cmd.
Navigate to the Box2D "Build" folder:
cd C:\Box2D_v2.1.2\Box2D\Build
Create the makefiles:
cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
Do it:
mingw32-make
This will throw some warnings, but should work almost completely. Then, near the end, it will error trying to compile the Testbed. AFAIK, there is no way to compile the Testbed using MinGW (you have to use Visual Studio, I believe). Luckily, an .exe of it is available on the Box2D site.
In the Box2D\Build\Box2D folder, there should now be a file called libBox2D.a. Copy this file into C:\codeblocks\mingw\lib.
Copy the Box2D\Box2D folder (the one containing Box2D.h) into C:\codeblocks\mingw\include.
[Thus, after this step, you should have a file C:\codeblocks\mingw\include\Box2D\Box2d.h, and NOT C:\codeblocks\mingw\include\Box2d.h]
And that's it. You should be able to compile and run the "Hello Box2D" example. Don't forget to link to the library.
[EDIT]
From the looks of your error, I'm going to guess that your MinGW Path environment variable is not setup correctly. Which is unusual, since when you install Code::Blocks/MinGW it usually sets it for you, I believe.
Anyway, (these steps may vary slightly depending on your version of Windows):
Right-click on "[My] Computer"-> Properties -> Advanced System Settings
Click "Environment Variables"
Depending on which Windows you have, you may see User Variables and System Variables, or it may be just one group (I can't remember the name). Anyway, create a new System Environment Variable called MINGDIR, with the value C:\codeblocks\mingw or wherever you installed it to. Then, find the variable called Path (or PATH) and append this to the end: C:\codeblocks\mingw\bin. Put a semicolon at the end of the previous entry, and do not use a space.
Also make sure that C:\CMake\bin is present in either the System Variable called Path, or the user variable called Path. If not, append it to the end.
I think that's it.