CVS is a way of storing and tracking changes in the code between releases. It always has the latest code and bug fixes, which is why you should preferably use CVS. Here's step-by-step instructions for how to check out (get) source code and build OpenVL from CVS. Before you begin, make sure you have installed the development packages (gcc, automake, autoconf, libtool etc.). You also need cvs installed (version 1.11 or greater).

Run the following commands in a directory that you have write access to (such as your home directory):

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.openvl.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/openvl login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.openvl.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/openvl co -P openvl

You should see it listing all the source files. Once this is done, you will have all the source files in the directory "openvl".

Once you've checked out OpenVL from CVS, run the follwing commands:

cd openvl
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-plugins

If you see any errors here, you probably do not have all the needed software installed on your system. Carefully read the error message and install the required software. If you are unable to figure out the problem after really trying hard, then post your problem on the openvl-devel mailing list and someone will answer. If the configuration ran without any errors, then run the following:

make

If you get any errors, try to find out the reason. If you cannot, then post the output to the mailing list.

System-wide install : Login as root and run the following command:

make install

This will install OpenVL into /usr.

User-level install : If you do not have root access, or if you want to install this library only for yourself, then you may want to follow these instructions. First, decide where you want to install the library. I would suggest you install in openvl directory under your home directory. Create this directory using the following command :

mkdir ~/openvl

Now you need to re-run the configure script to setup your new installation directory. Use these commands:

./configure --prefix=$HOME/openvl

If you prefer to install somewhere else, then simply replace $HOME with another location. $HOME by default points to your home directory. Now you are ready to install in this location that you selected. Run the following command to install:

make install

This will install the library in $HOME/openvl/lib and include files will go in $HOME/openvl/include. To use these include files and library, you need to setup some configuration variables. To use the library files of OpenVL installed in this directory when you run a program based on OpenVL, you need to make sure that the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH points to the library directory where the library files reside (in this case, $HOME/openvl/lib). To do this, run:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/openvl/lib;$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

Now if you run echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH , you should see the library directory listed. Before you run any program that uses OpenVL you need to make sure that you set the value of this variable. If you do not, then the program will by default use the library installed in your system - if any. If you want to make this setup permanent, then you need to set the variable in the init scripts of the shell you are using (~/.bashrc for bash shell, ~/.cshrc for tcsh or csh shells). But be careful - any OpenVL based program you run will always use your locally installed OpenVL library.

NOTE : You can check which library a program will use when you run it by running ldd . If you have correctly setup, then you should see that the OpenVL library used points to the library you installed above.

During compiling a program which uses OpenVL, you need to make sure that you are passing -I$HOME/openvl/include and -L$HOME/openvl/lib to the compiler. You can do this by modifying your makefiles (if you are compiling on the command line), or through the IDE that you are using to develop your code (like KDevelop, SlickEdit etc.).

When there are changes to OpenVL's code, you'll want to update your local copy. You don't have to remove the entire directory that you checked out and redo the whole thing; instead, from inside the directory, run:

cvs update -d
make

If you did a system-wide install in Step 3, then login as root before you run the following command. Else, simply run the following command:

make install

The update will merge all the changes into the current files, and then make will rebuild OpenVL.

And that should be everything. Please note you need to use gmake on BSD platforms.