The Open Source Glass Cockpit Project

Building OpenGC (the 5 minute rundown)

Please note! This page is not intended to be an exhaustive description of the OpenGC build process, but it should be adequate to get you started. It's assumed that you're comfortable working in your compiler environment and can make the necessary inferences when this guide is incomplete.

First, download and build the following libraries - note that newer versions may work but have not been tested. The following library list was updated on 22 Nov 2004 .

  1. FLTK 1.1.5 - no problems noted.
  2. Freetype 2.19 - no problems noted.
  3. FTGL 2.0.11 - Mac users should build using Project Builder rather than the command line and manually copy libftgl to /usr/local/lib as root. After copying, run "ranlib libftgl" as root from with /usr/local/lib.
  4. Plib 1.6 - no problems to note.

Next install/build CMake 2.0+ . On many platforms, precompiled binaries are available so building is not necessary. If you're unfamiliar with CMake, it may be helpful for you to look over the excellent documentation available and/or run through a simple example. Finally, you can build OpenGC by completing the following steps.

  1. Download the OpenGC source using CVS (see instructions at left).
  2. Run CMake to generate a build directory for OpenGC. It is suggested that you use an output directory named OpenGCbin to separate the binary files from the source code (this makes CVS updates easier). At this point you will also set the paths to the various libraries used by OpenGC - CMake will prompt you as to what the various library paths are defined as, usually by indicating that "this is the path where foo can be found". Unix users should run "ccmake", which displays a text GUI using curses. More complete documentation on this process is included with CMake. Note that it should not be necessary to edit the CMakeLists.txt file directly!
  3. Build OpenGC using the compiler you selected in CMake. Windows users do this by selecting the project workspace in the root binary directory. Unix/Mac users should cd to the binary directory and type "make" (as if you were building using standard makefiles).

What you get: a bunch of libraries that you can use in your own programs, and any sample applications that are in the Applications directory. At present there is one sample application which is built as an executable named OpenGC. It requires a configuration file opengc.ini, of which there is an example that will require modification to run on your system.

Please be aware that working with the CVS version means you are playing with code that is under active revision, and not all code may compile on all platforms at any given time. If you run into problems, mail the developers' list.

Tested compilers:
• GCC (Linux, Cygwin, and MacOS 10.2+)
• Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET