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

Description

QHull is a library/program to determine the convex hull of a set of points in n dimensions. The CSIRO library that is part of PLplot uses this for certain interpolation methods (convex hulls in n dimensions are related to Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations in n-1 dimensions). For further information visi http://www.qhull.org/ .

Instructions

• Download QHull for windows
• Unzip qhull package in a suitable place
• Copy the custom CMakeLists.txt from plplot\cmake\external\libqhull into the new directory (qhull-2003.1)
• Cd into the new directory
• Than (e.g. for MSVC):

mkdir build
cd build
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 build\local\lib and build\local\include respectively - a shared library can only be build with MinGW or Cygwin
• set environment variables

set QHULLDIR=path-to\qhull-2003.1\build\local
set CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH=%QHULLDIR%\include
set CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH=%QHULLDIR%\lib

CMake is now able to find the qhull library and headers.

GD Libary

Description

The gd library is needed my the gd driver of PLplot to produce png, jpeg or gif files.

Instructions

• 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.