Compiling BRL-CAD
This page contains simplified steps for building quickly.
Install Dev Tools
If you downloaded the virtual machine disk image, skip this step.
BRL-CAD uses the CMake build system and may be built with most compilers, so first step is to download and install CMake. If needed, compiling from their source distribution is actually very easy.
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Debian/Ubuntu:
aptitude install build-essential make cmake
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Fedora:
yum install clang++ make cmake
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CentOS:
yum install python3-pip devtoolset-9 pip3 install cmake scl enable devtoolset-9 bash
Install Dependencies
If you downloaded the virtual machine disk image, skip this step.
If you’re on a Mac or Windows, you’re good to go. For Linux, BSD, and other package-managed systems, you’ll want to install a few things.
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Debian/Ubuntu:
aptitude install sed byacc flex xsltproc aptitude install libncursesw5-dev libfontconfig-dev aptitude install xserver-xorg-dev aptitude install libx11-dev libxi-dev
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Fedora:
yum install libx11-devel
Download BRL-CAD
If you downloaded the virtual machine disk image, run this to make sure you have the latest sources:
svn up brlcad-svn-trunk
For everyone else, we recommend obtaining the latest sources from our repository:
svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/brlcad/code/brlcad/trunk brlcad-svn-trunk
If you run into trouble, snapshot release sources may also be obtained from Sourceforge.
Configure your Build
Next, set up a build directory and configure your compilation:
cd brlcad-svn-trunk mkdir build cd build cmake .. -DBRLCAD_ENABLE_STRICT=NO -DBRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
By default, our build enforces code standards that will halt on
trivial issues, so we recommend turning off that strict behavior for
your first compile. By default, it will also search your system for
dependencies, but this can be complicated so we tell the build to use
our bundled versions. When you graduate to doing development, you’ll
want to change the build type to -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug instead of
Release.
On a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian 10 also the option
-DBRLCAD_ENABLE_COMPILER_WARNINGS=NO is needed for the build to
complete.
BRL-CAD source files contain an INSTALL file with more detailed instructions if you want to customize the build.
Compile
You’re good to go, now it’s time to compile:
make
Compilation can take anywhere from a couple minutes to an hour
depending on your hardware. If you had a quad-core CPU, you might run
make -j4 to request compiling in parallel.
If the build fails, re-run make while capturing all output to a log:
make > build.log 2>&1 Please report any build failures.
Run!
You don’t have to install to run BRL-CAD. You can just run the binaries you just finished compiling. They are in the brlcad/.build/bin directory. There are 400+ tools in BRL-CAD. Here’s a couple to get started:
bin/benchmark run bin/mged bin/archer
The first command will evaluate your system performance. If you made a Release build, please submit your benchmark results to benchmark at brlcad dot org.
The second command runs the main graphical interface. Be sure to check out the extensive Documentation and -Main_Page- for tutorials.
The third runs our newer graphical interface that is under development.