Building CompuCell3D

Building CompuCell3D from source on Unix/Linux systems is fairly straightforward once all of it's dependencies have been satisfied. The following commands should build and install CC3D on most Unix/Linux systems.

Prerequisites

Hardware

CompuCell3D may build and run with less capable hardware, but has been tested with the following:

• 512MB RAM
• Hardware 3D Graphics Acceleration (most modern graphics cards)

Build Tools and Dependencies

In addition to the common Unix/Linux build tools, interpreters and, libraries, building and running CompuCell3D requires:

• Qt (version 4.6 or higher recommended)

• PyQt (with OpenGL modules)

• SWIG (version 1.3 or higher recommended)
• VTK (with Python wrappers, version 5.4 or higher recommended)

• Qwt (and PyQwt, version 4.2 or higher recommended)

• QScintilla (version 1.7 or higher recommended)
• CMake (CMake-GUI is recommended)
• Python (version 2.6 or higher recommended)

On Debian based distributions the following command should install all the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libvtk5-qt4-dev swig libqwt5-qt4-dev python-qt4 python-qscintilla2 cmake-gui python-qt4-gl python-vtk python-qwt5-qt4 python-dev

Source Code

Once the dependencies have been satisfied, obtain the source code from our SVN repository using the following command:

svn co http://code.compucell3d.org/svn/cc3d/branch/3.6.0 3.6.0-src

This will create a directory 3.6.0-src and download the source code into it.

Build Configuration: Starting CMake

CompuCell3D is configured using the CMake build system. The following command starts the CMake GUI:

cmake-gui

That will start the build system, click Browse Source and select the directory into which the source was downloaded:

Build Configuration: Selecting Build System

Enter a directory to use for building in the Where to build the binaries field and then click Configure. A dialog box asking to create the build directory will appear, and then one asking about the build system:

Select Unix Makefiles for the generator, select Use default native compilers and then click Finish. CMake will begin the configuration process. CMake will attempt to locate all of the dependencies installed above. If the following error occurs, ignore it:

CMake Error: Could not open file for write in copy operation /usr/local/pythonSetupScripts/Version.py.tmp
CMake Error: : System Error: No such file or directory
CMake Error at core/post_install_tasks/CMakeLists.txt:134 (configure_file):
  configure_file Problem configuring file

After the initial configuration has completed select Grouped and Advanced to make entering configuration values easier.

Build Configuration: Ungrouped Entries and BUILD Values

In Ungrouped Entries confirm that CMake has located PYVERSIONS_EXE and VTK_DIR. In BUILD select BUILD_QT_WRAPPERS.

Build Configuration: CMAKE

In CMAKE confirm that CMake has located all the build tools. In the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE field enter RelWithDebInfo. In the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX field enter the directory you would like to install CompuCell3D into.

Build Configuration: OpenMP, PYTHON, SWIG, ZLIB

In OpenMP, PYTHON, SWIG, and ZLIB confirm that everything has been located.

Click on Configure to have all the values updated.

Build Configuration: QT and Generate

CMake should locate Qt.

Click on Configure and then click on Generate to generate the Makefiles, ignore any warnings. Exit CMake

Building

To begin compiling CompuCell3D enter the build directory specified in the Where to build the binaries field of CMake earlier and use the following command:

make

Installing

Once compiling has completed CompuCell3D can be installed into the directory specified in the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX field earlier by issuing the following command:

make install

Running

After CompuCell3D has finished installing you can start CompuCell3D by entering the installation directory and issuing the following command:

./compucell3d.sh