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 o

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.