INSTALL

The Installation Guide to BRL-CAD
=================================

This document covers the installing BRL-CAD from either a source or
binary distribution.  Please see REPORTING PROBLEMS to troubleshoot.

Some platforms have additional platform-specific documentation
provided in the doc/ directory with additional information. This
presently includes the following:

  doc/README.AIX        -- IBM's Advanced Interactive eXecutive OS
  doc/README.BSD        -- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.
  doc/README.IRIX	      -- SGI IRIX and IRIX64
  doc/README.Linux	    -- Various Linux distributions
  doc/README.MacOSX	    -- Apple Mac OS X
  doc/README.Solaris    -- Oracle Solaris, OpenIndiana (Illumos), etc.
  doc/README.Windows    -- Microsoft Windows
  doc/README.VAX        -- Virtual Address eXtension architecture from DEC.
                           One of the original BRL-CAD platforms. These
                           days, re-created using the simh simulator.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
  Introduction
  Table of Contents
  Quick Source Install
  Installing from Binary
  Installing from Source
  Testing Functionality
  Post-Installation
  Reporting Problems
  Configuration Options


QUICK SOURCE INSTALL
--------------------

See https://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling for a platform-specific
walk-through including instructions for building on Windows.

Required tools:
  - Git must be 2.17 or later
  - CMake must be 3.12 or later
  - Compiler must be C++11-compliant
    - If using Visual Studio, version 2015 (14.0+) or later
    - If using GCC/G++, version 4.8.1 or later
    - If using LLVM/Clang 3.3 or later
    - If using Intel, version 2015 (15.0+) or later

Steps to compile, test, and install an optimized BRL-CAD on
non-Windows platforms:

  git clone https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad.git
  mkdir brlcad/build
  cd brlcad/build
  cmake .. -DBRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
  make -j4
  make check
  sudo make install

Once installed, run bin/mged or bin/archer to launch BRL-CAD's GUI
apps.  See POST-INSTALLATION for instruction adding bin/ folder to
your system PATH to more easily run geometry converters.


INSTALLING FROM BINARY
----------------------

There are a variety of different kinds of binary distributions of
BRL-CAD.  Some of the binary distributions are sufficiently generic and
are simply a binary compressed tarball distribution.  Others are
specific to a particular platform such as Debian, Mac OS X, FreeBSD,
and Windows etc.


Generic Binary Distributions:

For the unspecialized binary distributions that are basically
compressed tarballs of the installation root, they should contain the
entire hierarchy of the distribution.  To put that hierarchy in its
"installed" location, you just create the directory and move the
expanded tarball contents:

gunzip BRL-CAD_7.2.4_Linux_ia64.tar.gz
tar -xvf BRL-CAD_7.2.4_Linux_ia64.tar
sudo mkdir /usr/brlcad/rel-7.2.4
sudo mv BRL-CAD_7.2.4_Linux_ia64/* /usr/brlcad/rel-7.2.4/

Of course, there are other compression options possible including zip
and bzip2.  By default, BRL-CAD expects to be installed into
/usr/brlcad/rel-7.2.4. On some platforms the binary may be relocatable,
but this is not guaranteed. It's recommended that you start from a source
distribution if you would like to install into an alternate installation
location.  That said, if you do desire to install and/or run BRL-CAD from
a different location, give it a try...on some platforms it will work.

Something to be aware of, even if a binary distribution IS relocatable:
it will use its local copies of things like libraries only so long as the
"final" installed target directory that the build was compiled for
does not contain a BRL-CAD installation.  Due to the way path logic
is set, an installed copy of a library in the correct location will
always be loaded first, regardless of the presence of a "local" copy.


Mac OS X Disk Mounting Image:

Mount the .dmg and run the Installer .pkg contained therein.  This
will install into /usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z and will only require
confirming that your environment is set up properly (i.e. add
/usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z/bin to your path) as described in the Quick
Installation section.


Validating checksums:

The integrity of distributed files can be verified using checksums
that are published with released files.  Files on SourceForge's file
release system can be found by clicking the 'i' button at the end of
each file's name.  If you re-distribute BRL-CAD, checksums should be
retained with the files so others can validate origination.


INSTALLING FROM SOURCE
----------------------

There are a couple of ways to obtain the BRL-CAD sources, usually via
one of the following starting points:

  1) from a Git checkout, or
  2) from a source distribution tarball

Using the latest Git sources is recommended where possible since it
will have the latest changes.

There are many different ways to build BRL-CAD and depending on what
you need/want will determine which configuration options you should
use.  See the CONFIGURATION OPTIONS section below for details on how
to go about selecting which options are appropriate for you.

By default, the default configuration will prepare the build system
to perform a Debug build and install into the /usr/brlcad/dev-X.Y.Z
directory.   The CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX option may be used to change
that directory, or a Release build type may be specified to install to
/usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z - more on this below.  The
tradition of non-system installation paths goes back a couple of decades
and is a convenient means to isolate the BRL-CAD solid modeling
system from your system, resolves conflicts, facilitates uninstalls,
and simplifies upgrades.  The default configuration is performed by
running `cmake'.  It is not required to do the build in a directory
different from your source directory, but it is much cleaner and
*highly* recommended - this guide will illustrate the build process
with the assumption that the BRL-CAD source code is in the directory
brlcad-7.2.4 and the directory intended to hold the build output is
brlcad-build, located in the same parent directory as brlcad-7.2.4:

  .
  ./brlcad-7.2.4
  ./brlcad-build

To start the build process, cd into brlcad-build and run CMake,
pointing it to the source directory:

  cd brlcad-build
  cmake ../brlcad-7.2.4

As mentioned earlier, CMake uses two "build types", controlled by
the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE variable, that are useful for specific purposes:

* Debug (-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug) - Debug is the configuration that most
  developers will want to use when working on BRL-CAD.  It will add
  debug flags to the compile, and sets the default install directory to
  be /usr/brlcad/dev-X.Y.Z - in order to run the resulting installed
  binaries, the developer should ensure that the dev-X.Y.Z  path is
  first in his or her PATH environment variable.

* Release (-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release) - A release build is intended for
  final consumption by end users and as such has optimizations enabled.
  It also sets the install path to /usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z - best practice
  for release installation is to set up symbolic links in /usr/brlcad to
  point to the most current BRL-CAD release, while allowing older versions
  to remain installed on the system in case they are needed.

In both of these cases any individual variable may be overridden - for
example, setting -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/brlcad in a Debug build will
override the ../brlcad-install default.  Build types are a convenient way
to bundle sets of settings, but they do not prevent overrides if a more
custom setup is needed.

By default, all components and functionality will be built.
Note that BRL-CAD does require and include several 3rd party
components.  If your system does not include a sufficient version of
those required 3rd party components, they will be automatically
configured for compilation.

If the autodetection mechanisms fail to produce a working configuration,
the next simplest approach is typically to enable ALL the third party
components - this is typically a well tested configuration, but will
increase both the build time and final install size of BRL-CAD on
the system.  To set this variable on the command line, use -D to
define BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS for CMake:

  -DBRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS=Bundled

If the graphical interface (cmake-gui) is in use, it will list this
and other common options by default, allowing the user change them
graphically.  This is often quicker and more convenient than
defining options on the command line, but both will work.

You can also force on or off any individual 3rd party library by
setting the BRL-CAD variable for that feature to either on or off:

  -DBRLCAD_<LIBRARY>=ON

Other variables control BRL-CAD features.  For example, to NOT
enable functionality using OpenGL, set

  -DBRLCAD_ENABLE_OPENGL=OFF

To obtain an optimized build (for example, for BRL-CAD Benchmark
performance evaluation), enable BRLCAD_FLAGS_OPTIMIZATION:

  -DBRLCAD_FLAGS_OPTIMIZATION=ON

Profile-guided optimization builds are possible via two-pass
compilation.  Compile with this flag set, run the benchmark suite,
clean the build, and then compile again with this flag set.  Supported
compilers will utilize data from the first pass to guide optimization,
typically resulting in a significant performance increase:

  -DBRLCAD_PGO=ON

See the CONFIGURATION OPTIONS below for more details on all of the
possible settings.

You can specify options or preferences you want to always use by
default.  For example, to always enable all local libs the following
line can be added to your own configuration file:

  set(BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS "Bundled" CACHE STRING "Enable all local libs")

You can define your own configuration file in one of three ways.  The
build system will search for the file in this order:

  ${BRLCAD_SOURCE_DIR}/../BRL-CAD_CONFIG.GLOBAL

  ${BRLCAD_SOURCE_DIR}/BRL-CAD_CONFIG.GLOBAL

  the file defined in the environment variable "BRLCAD_USER_GLOBAL_CONFIG_FILE"

The build system will use the first file defined that exists.

Once configured, you should be able to successfully build BRL-CAD via
make:

  make

(On multicore systems, adding the -j flag (e.g. -j6) is recommended)

Installing the Compilation:

After the build successfully completes and assuming the benchmark also
produces correct results, installation may begin.  Like any package,
you must have sufficient filesystem permissions to install.  To
install into a system location, you can generally either become a
super user via the su command and run

  make install

or on operating systems set up to use sudo:

  sudo make install


TESTING FUNCTIONALITY
---------------------

The primary build target to validate a compilation of BRL-CAD is:

  make check

That runs a trio of test sets including "benchmark", "regress", and
"unit".  The first set is a performance test that also validates
whether ray tracing behavior is correct:

  make benchmark

The second test set is our regression tests that run a host of
rigorous integration tests and validate essential behavior:

  make regress

The third set runs unit tests that validate low-level behavior in
BRL-CAD's core libraries:

  make unit

Last but not least, one may simply run all available tests, though
note that some tests will intentionally fail:

  make test


POST-INSTALLATION
-----------------

Permissions:

Something to be aware of with CMake installations is that umask settings
are ignored by current versions of CMake.  It is a common situation in
Unix environments to want "group" members to have read/write access -
to achieve this, after installation the following find command can be
run (of course, substituting the actual BRL-CAD version for X.Y.Z):

find /usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z -type d -exec chmod ug+rwx {} \; -exec chmod o+rx {} \; -o -type f -exec chmod ug+rw {} \; -exec chmod o+r {} \;

The above 'find' line will set up permissions across a /usr/brlcad
rooted installation such that 'user' and 'group' will have read-write
access and 'other' will have read access consistently across all
files.


System PATH:

Normally, BRL-CAD's install directories are not in system PATH lists and
consequently BRL-CAD's executables will not be invocable without specifying
their full path.  This is normally handled in Unix environments by adding
the desired BRL-CAD installation's binary directory to the user's local path:

On Windows, the PATH system variable can be set using System Utility
in control panel.  Add the bin/ folder in the install directory to PATH.

On Linux/BSD/other systems:
  In the bash shell: export PATH=/usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z:$PATH
  In the csh shell:  setenv PATH /usr/brlcad/rel-X.Y.Z:$PATH


REPORTING PROBLEMS
------------------

Please report any bugs, support requests, or feature requests to:
  https://github.com/BRL-CAD/brlcad/issues


CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
---------------------

--- BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS ---

Enables compilation of all 3rd party sources that are provided within a BRL-CAD
source distribution.  If used this option sets all other 3rd party library
build flags to ON by default.  However, that setting can be overridden by
manually setting individual variables. Default is "AUTO" - 3rd party sources
are compiled only if they are not detected as being available and functioning
as expected.

Aliases:  ENABLE_ALL


--- BRLCAD_ENABLE_OPENGL ---

Enable support for OpenGL based Display Managers in BRL-CAD.
Default depends on whether OpenGL is successfully detected -
if it is, default is to enable.

Aliases:  ENABLE_OPENGL


--- BRLCAD_ENABLE_RUNTIME_DEBUG ---

Enables support for application and library debugging facilities.
Disabling the run-time debugging facilities can provide a significant
(10%-30%) performance boost at the expense of extensive error
checking (that in turn help prevent corruption of your data).
Default is "ON", and should only be disabled for read-only render
work where performance is critical.

Aliases:  ENABLE_RUNTIME_DEBUG, ENABLE_RUN_TIME_DEBUG, ENABLE_RUNTIME_DEBUGGING
          ENABLE_RUN_TIME_DEBUGGING


--- BRLCAD_DEBUGGING ---

Add compiler flags to aid in program debugging.  Defaults to ON.

Aliases:  ENABLE_DEBUG, ENABLE_FLAGS_DEBUG, ENABLE_DEBUG_FLAGS
          BRLCAD_FLAGS_DEBUG


--- BRLCAD_WARNINGS ---

Use extra warning flags when compiling C/C++ code.  Defaults to ON.

Aliases:  ENABLE_WARNINGS, ENABLE_COMPILER_WARNINGS
          BRLCAD_ENABLE_COMPILER_WARNINGS


--- BRLCAD_ENABLE_STRICT ---

Causes all compilation warnings for C code to be treated as errors.  This is now
the default for BRL-CAD source code, and developers should address issues
discovered by these flags whenever possible rather than disabling strict
mode.

Aliases:  ENABLE_STRICT, ENABLE_STRICT_COMPILE, ENABLE_STRICT_COMPILE_FLAGS


--- ENABLE_ALL_CXX_COMPILE ---

Build all C and C++ files with a C++ compiler.  Defaults to OFF.

EXPERIMENTAL!

Aliases:  ENABLE_ALL_CXX


--- BRLCAD_EXTRADOCS ---

The core option that enables and disables building of BRL-CAD's
DocBook based documentation (includes manuals and man pages for
commands, among other things).  Defaults to ON, but only HTML and MAN
formats are enabled by default - PDF must be enabled separately by use
of this option or one of its aliases.  Note that you may set
environment variable APACHE_FOP to point to your locally installed fop
executable file (which on Linux is usually a shell script with 0755
permissions).

Aliases:  ENABLE_DOCS, ENABLE_EXTRA_DOCS, ENABLE_DOCBOOK


--- BRLCAD_ZLIB ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the zlib library
provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.  Default is AUTO,
responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing
first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_ZLIB, ENABLE_LIBZ


--- BRLCAD_REGEX ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the Regular
Expression Library provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.
Default is AUTO, responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option
and testing first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also
AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_REGEX


--- BRLCAD_NETPBM ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the netpbm library
provided with BRL-CAD's source code.  Default is AUTO, responsive to
the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing first for a system
version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_NETPBM


--- BRLCAD_PNG ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the Portable Network
Graphics library provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.  Default
is AUTO, responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and
testing first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also
AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_PNG


--- BRLCAD_SC ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the NIST Step Class
Libraries provided with BRL-CAD's source code.  Default is AUTO,
responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing
first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_SCL, ENABLE_STEP, ENABLE_STEP_CLASS_LIBRARIES


--- BRLCAD_PROJ4 ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the PROJ.4 geographic
projection library provided with BRL-CAD's source code.  Default
is AUTO, responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and
testing first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also
AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_PROJ4


--- BRLCAD_GDAL ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the GDAL geographic
library provided with BRL-CAD's source code.  Default
is AUTO, responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and
testing first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also
AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_GDAL


--- BRLCAD_TCL ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the Tcl library
provided with BRL-CAD's source code.  Default is AUTO, responsive to
the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing first for a system
version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_TCL


--- BRLCAD_ASTYLE ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the Artistic Style
(astyle) utility provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.  Default is
AUTO,
responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing
first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_ASTYLE


--- BRLCAD_XSLTPROC ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the xsltproc XML
transformation utility provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.
Used for DocBook documentation processing.  Default is AUTO,
responsive to the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing
first for a system version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.
Depends on BRLCAD_EXTRADOCS.

Aliases:  ENABLE_XSLTPROC


--- BRLCAD_XMLLINT ---

Option for enabling and disabling compilation of the xmllint XML
validation utility provided with BRL-CAD's source distribution.  Used
for DocBook documentation validation.  Default is AUTO, responsive to
the toplevel BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS option and testing first for a system
version if BRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS is also AUTO.

Aliases:  ENABLE_XMLLINT



*** Note - Do not add or edit configuration option descriptions and alias
   lists in this file - those entries are auto-generated from information in
   the toplevel CMakeLists.txt file and src/other/CMakeLists.txt - any changes
   should be made in those files.  The CMake configuration process will
   automatically re-generate INSTALL with the new descriptions and alias
   information.