VHIST Installation Guide
Compiling and Installing VHIST
This document describes how to build, install and test the source code version of the VHIST reference implementation on various platforms.
Supported Platforms
VHIST is supported on Microsoft Windows XP and above, Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard and above as well as Linux. It might also work on other platforms which provide a recent version of Qt 4 and a decent C++ compiler, as well as Python 2.4 or above (but not Python 3).
Windows and Mac Version
If you are using Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X (on Intel Macs), there is no need to compile VHIST yourself. Instead, you can use the precompiled versions available on http://www.nf.mpg.de/vhist. These are standalone packages and do not have any dependecies to third party software. In particular for MS Windows users, it is recommended to use the standalone version since compiling on Windows can be troublesome and requires some manual processing.
Components
The VHIST Reference implementation consist of several components as listed below:
Commandline Tools
The commandline tools provide the basic functionality need to use VHIST. They can be used to create and read VHIST files and can easily be integrated into any type of script or batch processing file.
The commandline tools vhistadd, vhistxl and vhistxs are all written in pure Python and therefore do not require any dependencies expect for Python 2.4 or newer. Python 3 is currently not supported.
GUI Tools
The graphical user-interface tools provide feature-rich means to generate and view VHIST files. Some of these tools use the commandline tools in the background.
Building VHIST's GUI tools currently requires Qt 4.8 (http://http://qt-project.org/) and a C++ compiler. Additionally, you need Python 2.4 or newer in order to use our install scripts.
VHIST Library
The VHIST Library is written in C++ using Qt 4. It can be easily integrated into existing C++ Applications to allow your application to read and write VHIST files. For more information, see http://www.nf.mpg.de/vhist.
Automated Tests
The core tools of the "VHIST Reference Implementation" are backed by a set of tests, which are part of all distrbutions. The testsuit can be run on any system supporting Python 2.4 or newer. If any of the tests fails on your system, please contact us at vhist@nf.mpg.de and send us the output of the test applicaiton. Thanks!
Compilation and Installation on Linux and Mac OS X
Compiling the Sourcecode
To compile VHISTzard, unpack the VHIST archive, open up a terminal and execute
$ cd /path/to/vhist/directory
$ ./compile-vhistzard.py
The generated executable and library are placed in the bin/ subdirectory.
Installing VHIST
To install, open up a terminal and execute
$ cd /path/to/vhist/directory
$ ./setup.py
and follow the instructions on the screen. To install VHIST system-wide, use
$ sudo ./setup.py
instead.
Running the Automated Tests
To run the automated tests, open up a terminal and execute
$ cd /path/to/vhist/directory/bin
$ ./unittest_main.py
Executing the Applications
To execute one of the Applications, open up a terminal and execute
$ cd /path/to/vhist/installation/bin
$ ./vhistadd.py
$ ./vhistxl.py
$ ./vhistxs.py
$ ./vhistzard
(on Mac OS X: $ ./vhistzard.app/Contents/MacOSX/vhistzard
)
If you have placed symlinks to the applications in your path, you
can skip the first $ cd
command and start the application by typing
their names, such as
$ vhistzard
For information how to use the tools and applications, have a look at the VHIST Users' Guide.
Compilation and Installation on Windows using Cygwin/MinGW
To compile and install VHIST using Cygwin/MinGW, you have to download and install the Qt Libraries for Windows (minGW) from http://qt-project.org and Python 2.4 or above (not Python 3) from http://www.python.org. Additionally, you need zlib1.dll. You can find the dll on http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm. Unzip the VHIST Source Release (which contained this file) and copy zlib1.dll to \path-to\vhistdir\src\bin_win32\. Then open up the command prompt using the Shortcut generated by Qt in the startmenu.
Compiling the Sourcecode
Open up the command prompt provided by Qt and execute
> cd path\to\vhist\directory
> compile-vhistzard.py
Make sure to also copy mingwm*.dll, and the libraries QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll, QtNetwork4.dll, QtOpenGL4.dll and QtXml4.dll into the bin directory of VHIST. All these files are located in the bin directory of your Qt installation.
Installing VHIST
Copy the whole VHIST directory to the location where you want to install it. It is important that the extension ".py" is correctly associated with the python interpreter, otherwise VHISTzard will not be able to execute vhistadd.py.
Running the Automated Tests
To run the automated tests, open up the command prompt provided by Qt and execute
> cd \path\to\vhist\directory\bin
> unittest_main.py