Install or build ParaView differently depending on the operating system:

Installing binaries on Windows

Run PVSetup.exe or PVSetupMPI.exe and follow instructions.

Installing binaries on Unix/Linux

Uncompress the appropriate distribution (gunzip for .gz, uncompress for .Z), change the current directory to where you want the files to be extracted and extract (tar xf). This will extract the binaries into the bin/ directory and support files into the share/ParaView/ directory. We recommend installing in /usr/local or /opt.

Compiling ParaView

ParaView uses the CMake cross-platform build system. To compile ParaView, you will have to install CMake. Binary and source distributions of CMake can be found here. If it exists for you platform, we highly recommend using a binary distribution. CMake 1.4.5 or newer is required.

The complete distribution of ParaView contains VTK and Tcl/Tk 8.3.2. You do not have to download VTK or Tcl/Tk separately to compile.

Run CMake and Compile
Once CMake is installed, you are ready to build ParaView. We highly recommend reading the CMake documentation if you are not familiar with CMake: http://www.cmake.org/HTML/Documentation.html. (You can skip the Developer's Guide.) In summary, ParaView Complete build consists of:

  1. Running one of the CMake user interfaces
  2. Changing configuration options
  3. Compiling (make on Unix, Visual Studio on Windows)
On Windows, you should use the CMakeSetup.exe application to setup the VTK and ParaView build. On Unix/Linux, you should use the CMake wizard (cmake -i) or the terminal interface (ccmake). See the CMake documentation for details.

ParaView distribution is designed such that all the default build options selected by CMake for VTK and ParaView are appropriate for building ParaView. However you might have to tell CMake the location of some include files and libraries (for example MPI libraries if you enabled MPI support).

Unix/Linux

The following instructions only apply to Unix/Linux systems. First we will give you the quick and dirty way to build ParaView:

  1. untar the ParaViewComplete distribution
  2. cd ParaViewComplete06
  3. cmake -i (run cmake in wizard mode, where you have to answer questions about the build)

    or

    ccmake (run the terminal based interface to cmake where you interactively change build options)

  4. if necessary change build options
  5. make
It is a very good idea to tell cmake what C and C++ compilers you will be using. This can prevent many build problems. On most systems you can pass this information to CMake in the following way: 
  env CXX=/your/C++/compiler CC=/your/c/compiler cmake
otherwise you must set CXX and CC in your environment and then run ccmake (or cmake -i).

If you are planning to build ParaView for multiple architectures then you can either make a copy of the entire ParaView tree for each architecture and then follow the instructions above. Or you can have one copy of the ParaView tree and compile it in a different manner (out-of-source). Instead of running cmake from the ParaViewComplete06 directory, create a new directory where you have some free disk space (not in the ParaViewComplete tree), a possible name would be paraview06-solaris. cd into this directory and then run cmake similar to the following example: 

ls /home/joe_user
ParaViewComplete06 paraview06-solaris paraview06-sgi

cd paraview06-solaris
ccmake /home/joe_user/ParaViewComplete06
or
cmake -i /home/joe_user/ParaViewComplete06
This will create makefiles in the paraview06-solaris directory. Then you can run make in paraview06-solaris to compile ParaView. Repeat this process for each architecture you wish to build. Please note that on some platforms, it might be necessary to use the GNU Make to compile out-of-source. This is due to the fact that the Tcl/Tk build process uses some features not available on all make distributions.

Windows Installation

The Windows build process uses the CMake GUI, CMakeSetup. After running CMake, you use the compiler make utility to compile as follows.

  1. Install ParaView 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 (Visual Studio 6), solution files (Visual Studio .NET ) or makefiles (nmake, Visual Studio 6 and .NET). You'll have to tell CMakeSetup where you've placed your ParaView source code, and where to build the object code and dll's (we'll call it "paraviewbin").
  3. When CMakeSetup completes, start up Visual Studio and load ParaViewComplete.dsw or ParaViewComplete.sln. Select the ALL_BUILD project, and build it.
We recommend a 300MByte minimum swap size or you might have trouble during the link phase.