VMD-L Mailing List

From: Steve Smith (sas_at_lava3d.com)
Date: Tue Aug 24 2010 - 10:33:48 CDT

John -
> The linkage errors you are getting appear to be caused by a mismatched
> target architecture when you are compiling. How did you compile the
> other codes (e.g. ACTC?)
>
%cd actc; make

It wasn't obvious (to me) how to be more specific than that.
> Generally speaking, the easiest way to compile VMD is begin small,
> compiling against only the depencies and libraries that are absolutely
> necessary to get things up and running. For a basic VMD compilation,
> you need:
> FLTK, Tcl/Tk, and a compiled VMD plugin tree
>
I was wondering what the minimal configuration might be... that was one
of my imagined parallel paths, trying to find the minimal set... I'll
start here. It is quite possible that I don't need more than this.
> If you want to include NetCDF support, then you'll need that at the outset
> when you begin building the plugins.
> I would disable ACTC and LIBTACHYON and all that stuff to start with,
> until you get things going.
>
> You would setup a minimal MacOS X x86 build like this:
>
> ./configure MACOSXX86 FLTKOPENGL FLTK TK TCL SILENT PTHREADS
>
OK... I'll give that a whirl.
> >From there, you can add the other libraries or features you want, but I
> would wait until you get the basic compilation done and you have no
> other troubles.
>
> By default, VMD looks for all of the library dependencies in the
> vmd/lib directory. This is because we link against our own compilations
> of Tcl/Tk etc, that are known to have fewer bugs than whatever version
> the vendors may be shipping at any given time. I have in the past tried
> to make Mac versions that use the Apple-provided Tcl/Tk and Python, but
> those attempts turned out to be pointless, as the Apple-provided versions
> were rife with bugs that made the VMD builds unstable. Given that one has
> no influence over what versions the vendors include with the OS, this
> leaves us in a position to stick with our own builds, and to statically
> link where possible rather than dynamically linking, to prevent various
> shared library conflicts (though they are typically a bigger problem on
> the Windows platform than anywhere else).
>
> If you want to make VMD use your own libraries, you need to edit the
> default paths in the configure script to point at your own directories.
> These are generally easy to find, they are variables in the configure
> script:
> fltk_dir
> stock_tcl_include_dir
> stock_tk_library_dir
> and so on.
>
> The Tcl/Tk paths can also be overidden by environment variables:
> TCL_INCLUDE_DIR
> TCL_LIBRARY_DIR
> TK_INCLUDE_DIR
> TK_LIBRARY_DIR
>
> Let me know if you have specific questions and I'm happy to help out.
>
>
Thanks! The (real) fun will start after this as we try to add in
support for multi-projector output with warping for our dome(s). From
the little I can suss out in the code, it seems like a wash as to
whether to try to use the CAVE code or start a whole new display device...

- Steve 

-- 
Los Alamos Visualization Associates
LAVA-Synergy
4200 W. Jemez rd
Los Alamos, NM 87544
www.lava3d.com
sas_at_lava3d.com
505-920-0252