Slicer:Slicer 2.6 Building

Slicer relies on several powerful support libraries. Building slicer has been significantly simplified.

Generic Instructions (Linux/Unix/Solaris)

For anonymous checkout and build on most Linux and Solaris configurations, you only need to follow the steps below.

Notes:

• You will need a recent cvs client; version 1.12.10 is known to work.
• You will need a recent Subversion (svn) client
• You will need autoconf installed (except on Windows).
• Windows users need to see special download instructions below.
• If you are using gcc, use something around gcc ver. 3.3 vintage. There have been problems compiling various support libraries using gcc ver. 4.0.

1) Get an anonymous checkout

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.spl.harvard.edu:/projects/cvs/slicer login

and enter 'bwhspl' as the password and then

cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.spl.harvard.edu:/projects/cvs/slicer checkout -r release-2-6 slicer2

Note: to build the current cvs head, omit the '-r release-2-6' argument.

2) Build the required support libraries (Tcl/Tk, VTK, ITK)

cd slicer2
./Scripts/genlib.tcl

• Note: you need svn installed.

3) 'Build slicer'

./Scripts/cmaker.tcl

These steps will build the entire system for you, and you can use this as the basis for further development such as writing your own custom modules.

Windows

Like in releases 2.4 and 2.5, not all the support libraries are easy to build on windows in Slicer 2.6, so you can download a set of precompiled binaries to build against. Insert the following substeps between steps 1) and 2).

1.a) download this file: Slicer2.6-Lib-win32.zip

1.b) unzip the contents into your slicer2 directory. You will end up with the following libraries

Lib/win32/CMake-build
Lib/win32/tcl-build

Then continue with the build steps above, knowing that now you have tclsh executable located in

 Lib/win32/tcl-build/bin

This assumes you are building with the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET version of the development environment. If you need to use a different compiler, you need to change the GENERATOR variable in the 'slicer_variables.tcl' to 'Visual Studio 7.1'. Note that Slicer has not been fully tested on windows environments other than Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. If CMake complains that "cl" can not compile a simple test program, and you are running Visual Studio 7 .NET 2003, you need to change the GENERATOR variable to "Visual Studio 7 .NET 2003".

If you are using MS VisualStudio 6, you can download the building scripts: Slicer2-MSVC6-InstallScripts.zip. (Note that some modules may not build due to library incompatibilities).

Mac OSX

Follow the Generic install steps.

Troubleshooting

These steps are followed as part of the nightly build process for slicer as shown on the slicer dashboard here. Compare the builds shown on the dashboard to the system you are trying to build on.

Where to go for Help

Compilation questions can be sent to the Slicer Developer's Mailing List.