How to install VTK 6.1 for OSX 10.8 with Cocoa/XCode support?

Question

The extremely helpful guidelines posted at http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/Cocoa_VTK and via the readme file by Sean McBride and Mike Jackson inside the VTK repo were slightly out of date for VTK 6.1. So in case this helps anybody, I'm posting instructions for installing VTK 6.1 on OSX 10.8 with support for the SimpleCocoaVTK Xcode project.

Answer 1

* Installing VTK 6.1 for OSX 10.8 with Cocoa support *

These instructions slightly modify Ryan Glover's instructions at http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/Cocoa_VTK and the README.rtf in the VTK/Examples/GUI/Cocoa/Documentation folder by Sean McBride and Mike Jackson.

1. Clone the VTK git repo into a directory of your choice:

   cd /Users/you/

   git clone https://github.com/Kitware/VTK.git

   cd VTK

   git checkout tags/v6.1.0

2. make a build directory

   mkdir VTKBuild

   cd VTKBuild

3. Run the VTK cmake script

   • You will now be inside /Users/you/VTK/VTKBuild, run cmake from here (using the parent directory's CMake files):

   cmake ..

4. Edit lots of lines in the newly generated CMakeCache.txt (in the current VTKBuild directory). One issue I had was that there were error if I didn't use a full path for the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. So make sure to use "/Users/you/" instead of "~":

   CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/Users/you/VTK/VTKBuild

   BUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=OFF

   CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug

   VTK_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB:BOOL=ON

   CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES:STRING=i386;x86_64

   CMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT:STRING=/Applications/XCode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk

5. Compile the VTK project (this might take over an hour to run!):

   make

6. Copy headers to an include directory:

   make install

7. VTK should now be completely installed in the VTKBuild directory and ready to use in an XCode project!

8. Go to your finder, navigate to Users/you/VTK/Examples/GUI/Cocoa/ and double click to open SimpleCocoaVTK.xcodeproj in XCode.

9. In the XCode menubar (at the top of the screen) Go to Preferences->Locations->Source Trees and use the + button to add in two source trees:

   vtk-debug-include vtk-debug-include Users/you/VTK/VTKBuild/include/vtk-6.1

   vtk-debug-lib vtk-debug-lib Users/you/VTK/VTKBuild/lib

10. Click on the XCode project and delete all the references to vtk 6.0:

    • In the project view, select Targets->SimpleCocoaVTK and then press "Build Phases" and then open the "Link Binary With Libraries". Delete all the files that begin with "libvtk" and end with "6.0.a"

    • In the file view of the SimpleCocoaVTK project, hightlight and delete all the files in the vtk-libraries folder.

11. Make sure the XCode file view is active. Then in the finder, navigate to /Users/you/VTK/VTKBuild/lib, and select all the files that begin with "libvtk" and end with "6.1.a". Drag these files into the folder "vtk-libraries" in the XCode file view.

12. In XCode, do a Product->Clean

13. You can now build and run the sample SimpleCocoaVTK project.

Answer 2

I also had to set

VTK_WRAP_PYTHON:BOOL=ON

in CMakeCache.txt

Answer 3

It depends on what user you are too on your machine (computer) and the permissions relevant to that user. I did a find and replace on the CMakeCache.txt file and changed all /usr/local references to /Users/myusername/Develop/VTKInstall. That way everything's at your fingertips and you don't have to change permissions on things.

When you open up the Cocoa example make sure to set in you preferences these paths (e.g. Preferences->Locations->Source Trees). Also you'll need to re-import your vtk-libraries into the project.

I'm running Yosemite with XCode 6.1.1. I hope this helps someone!

Answer 4

If you get error messages likes this, when trying to build VTK:

@error: garbage collection is no longer supported

make[2]: *** Rendering/OpenGL/CMakeFiles/vtkRenderingOpenGL.dir/vtkCocoaRenderWindowInteractor.mm.o] Error 1

make1: *** [[Rendering/OpenGL/CMakeFiles/vtkRenderingOpenGL.dir/all] Error 2

You need to remove a flag in the source CMakeLists.txt:

@IF(APPLE)
 SET(VTK_OBJCXX_FLAGS_DEFAULT "-fobjc-gc")
 SET(VTK_REQUIRED_OBJCXX_FLAGS ${VTK_OBJCXX_FLAGS_DEFAULT} CACHE STRING "Extra flags for Objective-C++ compilation")
MARK_AS_ADVANCED(VTK_REQUIRED_OBJCXX_FLAGS)
ENDIF(APPLE)@

Either outcomment or delete it all together. Then run cmake again in an empty build directory. Check in the generated CMakeCache.txt in your build directory if it contains a key like VTK_REQUIRED_OBJCXX_FLAGS, it shouldn´t, try running cmake in an empty build directory again.

This 'bug' maybe fixed in future VTK versions.

Source: [Solved] Build Qt 5.2.1 + VTK 6.1.0 + CMake 2.8.12.2