Copyright (c) 1993-2001 Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, Bill Lorensen 
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First we will give you the quick and dirty way to build VTK. If you have OpenGL do the following:

If you will be using C++ as your development language:

  1) untar the src files
  2) untar the data files
  3) cd vtk
  4) cmake
  5) read and edit CMakeCache.txt adding options like python or tcl/tk support.
  6) cmake
  7) make

env CXX=/your/C++/compiler CC=/your/c/compiler cmake

Now here is the slightly more detailed description of the build process.

There are a couple of options in building the software that you need to decide on. First you need to decide if you are going to use the Mesa rendering library developed by Brian Paul. This is a software renderer that VTK can use on Xwindows based workstations. If your workstation doesn't support OpenGL then you will need Mesa because you have no other choice :-) If you want to build the VTK interpreter then you will need to have Tcl8.2.3 and Tk8.2.3.

Look to http://www.scriptics.com/ for information about getting Tcl and Tk. To obtain a copy of Mesa, written by Brian Paul, you can visit http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~brianp/Mesa.html.

To build VTK in the distribution directory just type cmake You can turn on tcl or mesa by editing the CMakeCache.txt file if you would like to use those packages as well. Building VTK for multiple architectures will be discussed later.

If you are planning to build VTK for multiple architectures then you can either make a copy of the entire VTK tree for each architecture and then follow the instructions above. Or if you have gmake, you can have one copy of the VTK tree and compile it in a different manner. Instead of running cmake from the VTK directory, create a new directory where you have some free disk space (not in the VTK tree), a possible name would be vtk-solaris. cd into this directory and then run configure similar to the following example:

ls /home/joe_user
    vtk vtk-solaris vtk-sgi

cd vtk-solaris
cmake /home/joe_user/vtk

  1) untar the src files
  2) untar the data files
  3) cd vtk
  4) cmake 
  5) read and edit CMakeCache.txt adding options like python or tcl/tk support.
    5.1) for tcl/tk support, you have to install the cygwin sources for tcl/tk, then
         set the following variables in the cache file:

        TK_INCLUDE_PATH:PATH=/usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/generic/
        TK_INTERNAL_PATH:PATH=/usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/win/
        TK_XLIB_PATH:PATH=/usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/xlib

  6) cmake
  7) make

    1. Install vtk3.2 distribution by unzipping into the appropriate directory.

    2. Execute CMakeSetup. This will pop-up a little
       GUI that allows you to tailor the build. It then starts
       building .dsw and .dsp files for microsoft, or makefiles for borland.
        You'll have to tell CMakeSetup
       where you've placed your VTK source code, and where to build
       the object code and dll's (we'll call it "vtkbin").

    3. When CMakeSetup completes, start up msdev and load VTK.dsw.
       Select ALL_BUILD project, and build it.

To run the cc examples just type their name. To run the tcl examples, (assuming that you built the tcl stuff) type

../../../vtk/tcl/vtk mace.tcl 

• I got a "warning: no configuration information is in tcl" from configure. This is correct and is supposed to happen.
• Strange compile errors on Unix. Make sure that you specify the environment variables CXX and CC prior to running configure. (If you have already run configure, do a "make clean" to remove the cached configure information.)
• Errors on Tcl or Tk include files. Make sure that you edit CMakeCache.txt to point to the correct location.
• Errors on Tcl or Tk libraries. Make sure that you edit CMakeCache.txt to point to the correct location.
• Link errors on Windows platforms. Make sure that the swap space is at least 300 MByte.

1) create the .cxx and .h file for the new class in one of the existing 
   directories. We recommend that you use the local/ directory.
2) edit CMakeLists.txt for that directory and follow the instructions in
   there. You will need to add the class in only one place.
3) you will need to rerun cmake (Unix) or CMakeSetup (Windows)
4) then make/gmake (Unix) or msdev (Windows).