Building OVITO on Linux — OVITO User Manual 3.6.0 documentation

# Building OVITO on Linux

The following instructions have been written for Ubuntu Linux 16.04 or newer, or any compatible Debian-based distribution. Other Linux distributions may require slightly different build steps.

## Installing dependencies

First install the required build tools and third-party libraries:

Linux distribution | Installation command
--- | ---
Ubuntu / Debian |
    sudo apt-get install build-essential git cmake-curses-gui qt5-default libqt5svg5-dev \
          libboost-dev libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev \
          libavresample-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libnetcdf-dev libhdf5-dev \
          libhdf5-serial-dev libssh-dev python3-sphinx python3-sphinx-rtd-theme
openSUSE |
    sudo zypper install git cmake gcc-c++ libQt5Concurrent-devel libQt5Core-devel libQt5Gui-devel \
           libQt5Network-devel libQt5DBus-devel libQt5OpenGL-devel libQt5PrintSupport-devel \
           libQt5Widgets-devel libQt5Xml-devel libQt5Svg-devel libavutil-devel libavresample-devel \
           libavfilter-devel libavcodec-devel libavdevice-devel netcdf-devel libssh-devel \
           boost-devel hdf5-devel libswscale-devel
CentOS / RHEL |
    sudo yum install epel-release
    sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ cmake qt5-qtbase-devel qt5-qtsvg-devel qt5-qttools-devel \
                         boost-devel netcdf-devel hdf5-devel libssh-devel
These packages allow building only a basic version of OVITO without video encoding support and documentation. In order to build a more complete version, other dependencies must be installed manually.

## Getting the source code

Download the source repository of OVITO into a new subdirectory named `ovito/`:

    git clone https://gitlab.com/stuko/ovito.git

## Compiling OVITO

Create a build directory and let CMake generate a Makefile:

    cd ovito
    mkdir build
    cd build
    cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

If this step fails, you can now run ccmake . to start up the CMake configuration program and adjust the build options as needed.

The build OVITO run:

    make -j4

If this step is successful, the ovito executable can be found in the directory `ovito/build/bin/`.