[Installer] Automatic installer for the pre-compiled libraries of VTK-5.0.2 in MinGW, Windows XP

Compilation of VTK in MinGW is even harder. It is really troublesome to get the libraries bulit.

The automatic installer for the MinGW version of pre-compiled libraries of VTK-5.0.2 in MinGW on Windows XP is also available now.

The download link can be found here:
http://www.driveway.com/n6i5y6n8o1

The screenshot of the installer is here (with embeded license of VTK):



For path settings, please view the install guide.

[Installer] Automatic installer for the pre-compiled libraries of VTK-5.0.2 in Visual Studio 7.1 (2003), Windows XP

After reviewing the license in VTK, I figured out that it is possible (and legal) to redistribute pre-compiled libraries in VTK.

I know it is very troublesome to compile the libraries by users. So, I have packed up the automatic installer for the pre-compiled libraries of VTK.

Currently, it is only available for VTK-5.0.2 in Visual Studio 7.1 (2003), Windows XP (But, it should be compatitable with future versions of Visual Studio compilers). I will add more kinds of distributions on request.

The download link can be found here: http://www.driveway.com/r2c6e0s6v0

The screenshot of the installer is here (with embeded license of VTK):


After installing the libraries, you need to set up the search pathes (i.e. include path and libraries path) for the IDE (in this case, Visual Studio 7.1). Please see the previous "Build VTK in Visual Studio" guideline to learn how to set up the pathes (Actually, you are not needed to go into the detail. You can just view the bottom few figures in the install guide).

The un-installer is provided in the install directory you specified.

Build VTK from source using MinGW/MSys

Here is the reference document on how to build VTK from source in MinGW/MSys



The minimal project for MinGW/MSys can be found here:



Two files are potentially useful in the build process:

http://code.hkpeterpeter.googlepages.com/CMakeLists.txt

http://code.hkpeterpeter.googlepages.com/jconfig.h

(Note: Although not quite accurate, you can think MinGW is a thin abstraction layer which allows you to port softwares in Unix-like environment to Windows with the minimal changes of code. MSys provides a Unix-like shell environment, just like bash/csh).

Download VTK data

Besides download VTK source code from the VTK homepage, we can also download the VTK dataset to help us learning VTK.

http://public.kitware.com/VTK/get-software.php#latest

Build VTK from source in Visual Studio

Here is the reference document on how to build VTK from source in Visual Studio and configure Visual Studio IDE



After you installed VTK and configure Visual Studio IDE. You can use this minimal project file to test your installation.