Install 3rd party libraries

In opposition to Linux, where installing development files for certain 3rd party libraries is only a matter of seconds (depending on the distribution), in Windows much more work needs to be done. In the following we provide instructions how to install 3rd party libraries with the corresponding development files so that the plplot library can use them.

QHull Library

The QHull library is needed for better grid calculation of 3d plots.

• Download the qhull library
• unzip qhull package
• copy CMakeLists.txt into the new directory
• cd into the new directory
• mkdir buildnmake
• cd buildnmake
• cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=local ..
• nmake install

 a static library will be built and the library and the include files
 will copied into local\lib and local\include respectively

• set environment variables

 @set QHULLDIR=path-to\qhull-2003.1\buildnmake\local
 @set CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=%QHULLDIR%\include
 @set CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=%QHULLDIR%\lib
 If you use only one compiler the install directory can just be 
 path-to\qhull-2003.1\local or similar.

GD Libary

Download the gd library for Windows from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ . The latest version is 2.0.33 (Windows dll). Unzip the archive to a suitable place. The package provides a dll and an import library for the MinGW compiler. To obtain an import library for the MSVC compiler run the makemsvcimport.bat batch file in a CLI with the correct environment settings for MSVC.

In order to let cmake find the gd library files you need to set environment variables (best in batch file - see above), e.g.

set GDLIBDIR=C:\DevZone\gdwin32
set CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=%GDLIBDIR%;%CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH%
set CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=%GDLIBDIR%;%CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH%

CMake should than be able to find the gd library and headers and the gd driver (png, gif, jpeg) will be automatically compiled into the library.