Compiling from Source

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In order to compile TexGen and all of its modules, the following software is required:

The following programs are needed to build TexGen:

The following libraries are needed to link to TexGen:

However to perform a minimum build of TexGen with none of the additional modules you only require CMake and a C++ compiler. It is recommended to begin with a minimum build, once that is working try adding modules one at a time. A list of modules along with dependencies is shown below:

  • Python interface: Python, SWIG
  • Renderer: VTK
  • Export: OpenCascade
  • GUI: wxWidgets, Renderer, Python interface
  • Unit tests: CPPUnit

A graphical representation of the modules and their dependencies can also be found in the TexGen API.

If you want to get the source code from the Subversion repository you will need to install Subversion by following the instructions below. Note that this is the very latest development source and so may it contain some bugs and unfinished features. However it is very easy to keep up to date with the latest version of TexGen using this method and will allow you to keep any modifications you have made to the source when updating. If you find a bug or implement new features that may be usefull to the rest of the community they can also be submited as patch and incorporated into TexGen following review.

Alternatively the stable source code can be downloaded as a tarball. Download the latest file release named texgen-3.x.x.tar.gz.

Windows (Microsoft Visual Studio C++, recommended method)

Prerequisites

It is assumed that Microsoft Visual Studio is already installed. If it isn't and you plan to use it, then install it. It may be possible to use the free Visual Studio Express; if anyone tries this and finds out one way or the other, please post the information either here or in the forum. Brief instructions on how to install the various 3rd party libraries under windows are given below. Note that you do not need to install all of these in order to perform the minimal build. Only CMake is absolutely required.

CMake

Download CMake and install, selecting 'Add CMake to the system PATH for all users' (select current user if this is not permissible on your system).

TortoiseSVN

Download TortoiseSVN and install it.

SWIG

Download the latest release of the windows .zip files and extract to a suitable location (e.g. c:\Program Files\swigwin-1.3.31).

Python

Download Python and install.

OpenCascade

Download OpenCascade and install; this extracts the files to a directory. If the installation doesn't start automatically, run the 'install.bat' file located the directory where the files where extracted (read 'readme.htm' file in the same directory for more information). Choose 'complete installation' and tick the box to set the environment variables.

VTK

Download the latest source files and extract them. Follow the instructions in 'README.html' found in the extracted directory to compile VTK using CMake. The following CMake settings should be set: 

BUILD_EXAMPLES           OFF
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS        ON
VTK_USE_MPEG2_ENCODER    OFF
VTK_USE_PARALLEL         OFF
VTK_USE_RENDERING        ON
VTK_WRAP_JAVA            OFF
VTK_WRAP_PYTHON          OFF
VTK_WRAP_TCL             OFF

You may be able to get things working with different settings, however these are the settings I use and are known to work.

wxWidgets

Download and install the windows version of wxWidgets (wxMSW). It is then necessary to compile wxWidgets from source, detailed instructions on how to do this can be found in 'install.txt' located in the 'docs\msw' subfolder. The main steps are to open 'wx.dsw' with MSVC located in the 'build\msw' subfolder and compile both Release and Debug configurations (The configuration can be selected from the drop down box on the main toolbar in Visual Studio. Universal, Unicode and DLL versions need not be compiled).

Checkout TexGen source code from subversion server

Create a directory where you would like to store the TexGen source code in Windows Explorer. Right click on this folder and select 'SVN Checkout...' in the context menu that appears. In the dialog box which follows, enter 'https://texgen.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/texgen/TexGen/trunk/' in the URL field. The Checkout directory field should have been filled in automatically. Click on OK to start downloading the TexGen source code. In future the latest version of the source code can be obtained simply by right clicking on the folder and selecting 'SVN Update' from the context menu.

Configure the build system with CMake

Run CMake from its shortcut on the Start menu. There are some general instructions on using CMake on the CMake website which are worth reading. You will need to fill in the source code location, this should point to where you checkout out the latest TexGen SVN code or where you extracted the source code from the zip file. Also set where to place the binary files once they are compiled, this can be the same as the source directory, a subdirectory within the source directory or any other location.

Once that is entered click 'Configure' and choose the Visual Studio version which you have installed and click. You will initially get a number of error messages such as: 

CMake Error: Swig was not found on the system. Please specify the location of Swig. (click OK)
CMake Error: Error in configuration process, project files may be invalid. (click OK)

This is normal, in order to get rid of the errors you will need to tell CMake where the various libraries you have installed can be found. This is done in the Cache Values sections.

It is recommended to begin with a minimal build, this is achieved by setting the cache values as follows: 

BUILD_CASCADE_EXPORT           OFF
BUILD_DOCUMENTATION            OFF
BUILD_EXAMPLES                 OFF
BUILD_GUI                      OFF
BUILD_PYTHON_INTERFACE         OFF
BUILD_RENDERER                 OFF
BUILD_SHARED                   ON
BUILD_UNIT_TESTS               OFF

Once these are set press configure again and you shouldn't have any more errors/warnings. Press 'OK' to generate the MSVC solution and project files.

Compile

Now, using Windows Explorer, navigate to the TexGen build directory (C:\Program Files\TexGen3.2.0) and launch Visual Studio by double-clicking on the file TexGen.sln.

Set the configuration to 'Release', and in the Solution Explorer, select the 'INSTALL' project. Choose Build->Build Solution (or press F7). This will take a few minutes to compile the code. When the compiler has finished, the installation process will copy the Python modules into the Python site-packages directory so that they can be imported into scripts, and it will copy the executables into C:\Program Files\TexGen\. The TexGen GUI executable file can be found under C:\Program Files\TexGen\TexGenGUI.exe.

To build the documentation, Doxygen is required. Open a command prompt in the directory C:\SVN\TexGen\Docs and run 'doxygen'. If the doxygen directory is not in your path, you must add it, or give the full path on the command line, e.g.: "C:\Program Files\Doxygen\Bin\Doxygen.exe".

If you plan to use TexGen from within Abaqus/CAE, it is necessary to copy the TexGen directory from C:\Program Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\ to C:\Abaqus\6.7-1\Python\Lib\, or (preferably) to make your Python script look in the right place like this: 

import sys
sys.path.append('C:/Program Files/Python24/Lib/site-packages/')

Integrating TexGen with ABAQUS

If you are using ABAQUS and wish to use TexGen Python scripting from within the ABAQUS/CAE environment, you must compile TexGen with the same version of Python as ABAQUS uses. The following table shows which version of Python is used in specific ABAQUS versions: 

ABAQUS 6.6-1  -  Python 2.3.3
ABAQUS 6.7-1  -  Python 2.4.3

If your version of ABAQUS is not listed in the table above you can type 'abaqus python -V' to check what version of Python is used (then please edit this page to update the table). You can obtain specific versions of Python from http://www.python.org/download/releases/x.y.z/ where x.y.z represents the version number.

Windows (Cygwin and gcc, alternate method)

A limited build (without graphics) can be made under cygwin, this is a UNIX emulation environment available at www.cygwin.com. This can exist peacefully next to the native windows version. Cygwin creates a unix-style file system within your windows installation. If you choose c:/cygwin as your install directory, your HOME will be at c:/cygwin/home/<username>/.

Download cygwin and install packages

Install gcc, g++, wget, make and cmake using the setup.exe program from the cygwin website. For the mesh generator and python interface to work we currently need VTK and swig.

This downloads and installs swig from source (when starting the cygwin shell you can paste this into the command line, otherwise write it to a file and run it with sh). 

mkdir progs
cd progs 
SWIG=swig-1.3.31
wget -nc http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/swig/$SWIG.tar.gz
tar xzvf $SWIG.tar.gz 
cd $SWIG
./configure 
make 
make install

This downloads and installs VTK from source, in the ccmake stage, use the cmake graphical commands to get a working install. 

VTK=vtk-5.0.3
wget -nc http://www.vtk.org/files/release/5.0/$VTK.tar.gz
tar xzvf $VTK.tar.gz
mkdir vtkbin
cd vtkbin
ccmake ../VTK
make 
make install

Install TexGen from source

Now we can proceed to install texgen, as an example we'll work in ~/temp/texgen 

cd ~; mkdir temp; cd temp; mkdir texgen; cd texgen
svn checkout https://texgen.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/texgen/TexGen/trunk/ TexGen
cd .. ; mkdir tbin; cd tbin
ccmake ../texgen
make 
make install

This should result in a working texgen install in ~/temp/texgen/tbin.

Unix

Notes

If you are installing to a system where you don't have root access (i.e. this computer does not belong to you) you won't be able to install the software using the default configure script. This is because by default software is installed to the /usr/local directory. If you are not a systems administrator then you will quite rightly not have write access to this folder. All is not lost! You can still install software into your home directory. In order to do this you should always call the configure script with the following parameter: --prefix=$HOME. This goes for all the software to be installed below. All executables will then be placed in ~/bin, libraries in ~/lib, includes in ~/include, etc...

In the guide below the parameter is included in italic. If you do in fact have root access then it is recommended to omit this parameter and install to the default directory so that other users will also have access to the software.

Get TexGen from Subversion repository

Install Subversion

Download Subversion and unpack. Open a shell in extracted folder and type: 

./configure --with-ssl --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Notes:

  • You will need to install Subversion with SSL support since TexGen is hosted on sourceforge which uses SSL. If you don't configure with the --with-ssl flag you will get an error when trying to checkout TexGen in the next step.
  • If you have trouble installing the latest version of Subversion, try installing version 1.3 as it does not require a seperate dependencies package.

Checkout

Open a shell in folder you wish to place TexGen (e.g. ~/): 

svn checkout https://texgen.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/texgen/TexGen/trunk/ TexGen

Notes:

  • The first parameter tells SVN to get the files for the first time
  • The second parameter is the location of the TexGen svn repository
  • The final parameter is the subfolder to put the files in

Update

The checkout command only needs to performed once. SVN keeps track of where the code was originally obtained and can update to the latest version without having to re-specify the location. In order to do that open a shell in the folder where TexGen was originally checkout (e.g. ~/TexGen) and type: 

svn update

or if you are in a hurry you can type the shorter version: 

svn up

Compile source

Install CMake

Download CMake and unpack. Open a shell in extracted folder and type: 

./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Compile TexGen core

Open a shell in the folder with the TexGen source code (e.g. ~/TexGen): 

mkdir bin
cd bin
ccmake ../

Press 'c' to configure. When a warning pops up telling you it can't find such and such a file press 'e' to close it. You will now need to specify which components of TexGen to build and where their dependencies can be found. Use the up and down arrows to move the caret and press enter to modify options. Do this to set BUILD_GUI, BUILD_PYTHON_INTERFACE and BUILD_RENDERER to OFF. You are basically telling CMake not to attempt to build these components, which means that you won't need to have installed their dependencies.

Similarly to the --prefix=$HOME parameter to the configure script, you can tell CMake to install TexGen to your home directory by changing CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to ~/. Note that it won't actually install anything until you get type make install.

Now press 'c' again to update the changes.

Hopefully now that all the additional modules have been switched off no errors will be shown. Press 'g' to generate the makefiles and exit. At the shell type: 

make
make install

Note that at this point you have only built and installed the TexGen Core library which doesn't actually do anything on its own. If you plan to incorporate TexGen into your own C++ program then this is enough, however if you would like to interface with TexGen from a Python script or Graphical User Interface then follow the steps below.

Compiling optional modules

Python interface

Download Python and unpack. Open a shell in the extracted folder and type: 

./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Download SWIG and unpack. Open a shell in the extracted folder and type: 

./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Open a shell in the folder where you called ccmake from for the first time (e.g. ~/TexGen/bin): 

ccmake ../

Use the up and down arrows to reach BUILD_PYTHON_INTERFACE and press Enter to set it to ON. Then press 'c' to configure. You will probably get a warning saying you need to specify the location of SWIG and/or Python, press 'e' to close it.

Set the PYTHON_INCLUDE_PATH, PYTHON_LIBRARY, PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES_DIR, SWIG_DIR and SWIG_EXECUTABLE parameters correctly where necessary. If you have installed packages to your home directory then they should look something like this: 

PYTHON_INCLUDE_PATH: ~/include/python2.5
PYTHON_LIBRARY: ~/lib/python2.5/config/libpython2.5.a
PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES_DIR: ~/lib/python2.5/site-packages
SWIG_DIR: ~/bin
SWIG_EXECUTABLE: ~/bin/swig

Once that is done press 'c' again. You may need perform this process over several iterations. When everything is set correctly press 'g' to generate the makefiles.

At the shell type: 

make
make install

Assuming the build completed without errors you should now be able to access TexGen functions from within Python. In order to check everything worked as planned open Python in interactive mode by typing: 

python

Then from within Python type: 

from TexGen.Core import *
CTexGen.GetInstance().GetVersion()

This should display the version of TexGen installed.

Troubleshooting

Q: I get the following error when linking _Core.so: 

libpython2.5.a(abstract.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol'
can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC

A: Try removing libpython2.5.a from the libraries to link to by setting PYTHON_LIBRARY to a bogus path, e.g.:

PYTHON_LIBRARY: ~/

By doing so you may receive a warning similar to this: 

Warning: Ignoring path found in link libraries for target: _Core, path is:
/home/username. Expected a library name or a full path to a library name.

This warning may be ignored.

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