It is advised to read through this entire doc page before getting started

Prerequisites for Linux

Compiler

SOFA requires at least GCC 4.8 or Clang 3.4.
Install the standard compilation toolkit (GCC + Make) with this command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

CMake: Makefile generator

SOFA requires at least CMake 3.1. To get CMake, execute the usual command:

sudo apt-get install cmake cmake-qt-gui

In case your configuration is Ubuntu 14.04 (or similar), the associated repositories only provide CMake 2.8.7. Fortunately, a more recent version of CMake is available in some PPAs, such as ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cmake cmake-qt-gui

[optional] Ninja: build system

Ninja is an alternative to Make. It has a better handling of incremental builds.

sudo apt-get install ninja-build

To use Ninja, do not forget to set the CMake generator to "Codeblocks – Ninja" (as explained in Generate a Makefile with CMake).
If you already configured or generated the project, simply set CMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM=/usr/bin/ninja in CMake GUI.

[optional] Clang (compiler)

Clang is an alternative to GCC. It compiles approximately two times faster !

sudo apt-get install clang

To tell CMake you are using Clang use "Specify native compilers" option during first Configure/Generate, then set C compiler to /usr/bin/clang and C++ compiler to /usr/bin/clang++.

If you already configured or generated the project, simply set CMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang and CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++ in CMake GUI.

If you prefer using the command line:

cmake -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++ ../../src/

WARNING: Clang does not compile CUDA host code, prefer GCC for this (i.e. set CUDA_HOST_COMPILER=/usr/bin/gcc)

[optional] CCache (cache system)

If you work on Linux, we advise you to use ccache. It is by no means mandatory, but it will dramatically improve the compilation time if you make changes to SOFA. As explained on the ccache website:

"ccache is a compiler cache. It speeds up recompilation by caching previous compilations and detecting when the same compilation is being done again."

To get ccache, execute the usual command:

sudo apt-get install ccache

Required dependencies

Finally, SOFA requires some libraries:

• Qt (>= 5.5.0)

  We recommend to install Qt in your user directory with the unified installer.

• Boost (>= 1.54.0)

  sudo apt-get install libboost-atomic-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-date-time-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-locale-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev

• Python 2.7

  sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev python-numpy python-scipy

• Additional libraries: libPNG, libJPEG, libTIFF, Zlib, Glew

  sudo apt-get install libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff-dev zlib1g-dev libglew-dev

Some plugins depend on libraries that are available in the repositories. You probably don’t need them all, but you might find it convenient to install them all and not worry about it later:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libcgal-dev libblas-dev liblapack-dev libsuitesparse-dev libassimp-dev

Building on Linux

Setting up your source and build directories

To set up clean repositories, we propose to arrange the SOFA directories as follows:

• sofa/
  • src/
  • build/
    • v18.12/
    • master/

First, download the sources from Git repository:

Get the current stable version on the v18.12 branch:

git clone -b v18.12 https://github.com/sofa-framework/sofa.git sofa/src/

OR get the development unstable version on the master branch:

git clone -b master https://github.com/sofa-framework/sofa.git sofa/src/

Generate a Makefile with CMake

If you didn’t do it yet, create a build/ folder respecting directories arrangement.

Run CMake-GUI and set source folder with Browse Source and build folder with Browse Build.

Next, run Configure. A popup window will ask you to specify the generator for the project.
If you installed Ninja, select "Codeblocks – Ninja". Otherwise, select "Codeblocks – Makefile".
Keep "Use default native compilers" selected, and press "Finish".

You need to run Configure twice, since SOFA requires two passes to manage the module dependencies. You can then customize your version of SOFA, activate or deactivate plugins and functionalities.

When you are ready, press Generate. This will create your Visual Studio solution or your makefiles if you chose another generator.

Troubleshooting: Qt detection errors

To solve Qt detection errors, click on Add Entry and add CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH with path /home/YOUR_USERNAME/Qt/QT_VERSION/COMPILER matching your Qt architecture.
Example: CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/home/bob/Qt/5.7/gcc_64
Configure again.

A further dev warning may appear:

CMake Warning (dev) at YOUR_QT_PATH/lib/cmake/Qt5Core/Qt5CoreMacros.cmake:224 (configure_file):
configure_file called with unknown argument(s):

COPY_ONLY

Call Stack (most recent call first):
applications/projects/Modeler/exec/CMakeLists.txt:14 (qt5_add_resources)

This is just a typo with Qt5CoreMacros.cmake file. It uses COPY_ONLY instead of COPYONLY. Simply edit your Qt5CoreMacros.cmake, replace COPY_ONLY with COPYONLY and Configure again.

Compile

To compile in the terminal, go to your build directory and run make or ninja depending on the generator you chose during CMake configuration.
Do not forget the -j option to use all your CPU cores.

Time for a coffee!

Setting up QtCreator

The following instructions assume that you have set up two build directories as explained in the previous section.

In QtCreator, open project CMakeLists.txt. Choose build-release as build directory, then click on Finish. QtCreator is ready to compile, and the build configuration is named "all", though it corresponds to a Release.

Click on the Project button in the left, then rename the configuration from "all" to "Release".

Now click on add/Build to create a new configuration called "Debug". Choose build-debug as build directory and run Cmake. If you set the -G "CodeBlocks – Unix Makefiles" option in the cmake command line discussed in the previous section, you do not even need to run CMake.

You can now switch between Debug and Release in QtCreator. The compilation will be done using ccache (if installed). You can check this by setting VERBOSE=1 as additional argument to Make in the Projects tab on the left. Moreover, you probably want to run parallel compilations by setting -j10 for instance, for 10 parallel compilations, as additional argument to Make.