Welcome to the OpenSceneGraph (OSG).



For up-to-date information on the project, in-depth details on how to 

compile and run libraries and examples, see the documentation on the 

OpenSceneGraph website:



    http://www.openscenegraph.org

  

For the impatient, read the simplified build notes below. For support 

subscribe to our public mailing list:



    http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/MailingLists







Robert Osfield.

Project Lead.

4th Februaru 2009.



--



How to build the OpenSceneGraph

===============================



The OpenSceneGraph uses the CMake build system to generate a 

platform-specific build environment.  CMake reads the CMakeLists.txt 

files that you'll find throughout the OpenSceneGraph directories, 

checks for installed dependenciesand then generates the appropriate 

build system.



If you don't already have CMake installed on your system you can grab 

it from http://www.cmake.org, use version 2.4.6 or later.  Details on the 

OpenSceneGraph's CMake build can be found at:



    http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Build/CMake



Under unices (i.e. Linux, IRIX, Solaris, Free-BSD, HP-Ux, AIX, OSX) 

use the cmake or ccmake command-line utils, or use the included tiny 

configure script that'll run cmake for you.  The configure script 

simply runs 'cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release' to ensure that you 

get the best performance from your final libraries/applications.

 

    cd OpenSceneGraph

    ./configure

    make

    sudo make install

  

Alternatively, you can create an out-of-source build directory and run 

cmake or ccmake from there. The advantage to this approach is that the 

temporary files created by CMake won't clutter the OpenSceneGraph 

source directory, and also makes it possible to have multiple 

independent build targets by creating multiple build directories. In a 

directory alongside the OpenSceneGraph use:



    mkdir build

    cd build

    cmake ../OpenSceneGraph -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

    make

    sudo make install



Under Windows use the GUI tool CMakeSetup to build your VisualStudio 

files. The following page on our wiki dedicated to the CMake build 

system should help guide you through the process:



    http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/PlatformSpecifics/VisualStudio



Under OSX you can either use the CMake build system above, or use the 

Xcode projects that you will find in the OpenSceneGraph/Xcode 

directory. See release notes on OSX CMake build below.



For further details on compilation, installation and platform-specific 

information read "Getting Started" guide:



    http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/GettingStarted

   

   

-- Release notes on OSX build, by Eric Sokolowsky, August 5, 2008



There are several ways to compile OpenSceneGraph under OSX.  The

recommended way is to use CMake 2.6 to generate Xcode projects, then use

Xcode to build the library. The default project will be able to build

Debug or Release libraries, examples, and sample applications. Here are

some key settings to consider when using CMake:



BUILD_OSG_EXAMPLES - By default this is turned off. Turn this setting on

to compile many great example programs.



CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES - Xcode can create applications, executables,

libraries, and frameworks that can be run on more than one architecture.

Use this setting to indicate the architectures on which to build OSG.

Possibilities include ppc, ppc64, i386, and x86_64. Building OSG using

either of the 64-bit options (ppc64 and x86_64) has its own caveats

below.



OSG_BUILD_APPLICATION_BUNDLES - Normally only executable binaries are

created for the examples and sample applications. Turn this option on if

you want to create real OSX .app bundles. There are caveats to creating

.app bundles, see below.



OSG_WINDOWING_SYSTEM - You have the choice to use Carbon or X11 when

building applications on OSX. Under Leopard and later, X11 applications,

when started, will automatically launch X11 when needed. However,

full-screen X11 applications will still show the menu bar at the top of

the screen. Since many parts of the Carbon user interface are not

64-bit, X11 is the only supported option for OSX applications compiled

for ppc64 or x86_64.



There is an Xcode directory in the base of the OSG software

distribution, but its future is limited, and will be discontinued once

the CMake project generator completely implements its functionality.





APPLICATION BUNDLES (.app bundles)



The example programs when built as application bundles only contain the

executable file. They do not contain the dependent libraries as would a

normal bundle, so they are not generally portable to other machines.

They also do not know where to find plugins. An environmental variable

OSG_LIBRARY_PATH may be set to point to the location where the plugin

.so files are located. OSG_FILE_PATH may be set to point to the location

where data files are located. Setting OSG_FILE_PATH to the

OpenSceneGraph-Data directory is very useful when testing OSG by running

the example programs.



Many of the example programs use command-line arguments. When

double-clicking on an application (or using the equivalent "open"

command on the command line) only those examples and applications that

do not require command-line arguments will successfully run. The

executable file within the .app bundle can be run from the command-line

if command-line arguments are needed.





64-BIT APPLICATION SUPPORT



OpenSceneGraph will not compile successfully when OSG_WINDOWING_SYSTEM is

Carbon and either x86_64 or ppc64 is selected under CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES,

as Carbon is a 32bit only API. A version of the osgviewer library written in

Cocoa is needed. However, OSG may be compiled under 64-bits if the X11

windowing system is selected. However, Two parts of the OSG default

distribution will not work with 64-bit X11: the osgviewerWX example

program and the osgdb_qt (Quicktime) plugin. These must be removed from

the Xcode project after Cmake generates it in order to compile with

64-bit architectures. The lack of the latter means that images such as

jpeg, tiff, png, and gif will not work, nor will animations dependent on

Quicktime. A new ImageIO-based plugin is being developed to handle the

still images, and a QTKit plugin will need to be developed to handle

animations.