GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Code-in 2014 BRL-CAD

Compile BRL-CAD with Tcl/Tk's latest core-8-5-branch

completed by: Marc Tannous

mentors: Deepak, Dishank

BRL-CAD uses the Tcl/Tk libraries extensively. We currently embed a version of Tcl/Tk 8.5 in our src/other directory (see src/other/tcl and src/other/tk). There have been recently enhancements to the 8.5 line in their repository that we'd like to test.

Your task involves downloading the latest core-8-5-branch Tcl/Tk sources from their Fossil repository, compiling and installing them on your system, then compiling BRL-CAD to use that version of Tcl/Tk. When you run "cmake", you'll want to check the output tests and cmake summary to make sure that it is using the system version you installed. Once you confirm that, you'll need to test if our build succeeds.

  1. Download and run our VM image if you're not using Mac or Linux (Mac preferred)
  2. Get a current checkout of BRL-CAD (or update the checkout in the VM)
  3. Compile and install BRL-CAD successfully using defaults (just to make sure you can)
  4. Install Fossil
  5. Checkout the core-8-5-branch
  6. Compile and install that tcl/tk branch
  7. Delete BRL-CAD build directory and compile/install BRL-CAD again using that tcl/tk branch (see our INSTALL file for help)

You'll submit a detailed report of everything you do including a complete transcripts of all commands you run and their output.

References:
  • http://fossil-scm.org
  • http://brlcad.org/wiki/Compiling