Build Instructions ITK

Up to Windows Build / Linux Build.

See also the official build instructions in the ITK wiki.

Getting the Source Code

• Download the latest release source archive (.zip for Windows, .tar.gz for Linux) from ITK Downloads; recent versions (such as 5.4.1 or 5.4.2 at the time of writing) are typically tagged well in advance in the git(hub) repository; so the be up to date, we currently recommend to download the latest tagged stable version on github, that is, without an aNN suffix (denoting an alpha version, like v6.0a02) or an rcNN suffix (denoting a release candidate, such as v5.4rc04)
• Extract to an arbitrary location from now on referred to as itk-src-dir (e.g. C:\Tools\itk\src-5.2.1). Note: On Windows, make sure that the full path you choose for itk-src-dir (and itk-bin-dir, see below) is not too long (recommendation: below 25 characters in total), otherwise you might see errors regarding the command line for moc being too long.

Configuration

• Start CMake.
• Make sure the "Advanced" checkbox is ticked.
• Specify itk-src-dir under "Where is the source code", and an arbitrary itk-bin-dir (e.g. C:\Tools\itk\bin-5.2.1) under "Where to build the binaries".
• Press "Configure".
• Press "Yes" when asked whether the build directory should be created.
• When asked, specify the desired generator; e.g. "Visual Studio 16 2019" / "Visual Studio 17 2022" on Windows, or "Ninja" / "Unix Makefiles" on Linux; these generators are the ones that we use internally; choosing another generator should be no problem, but as we haven't tested them, you might encounter problems, if so please let us know!
• Typically, you'll want to leave "Use default native compilers" checked; choose "Specify native compilers" if you know what you're doing and you want to use a different compiler (which you will be required to select in a next step).

Mandatory CMake Settings

These CMake options need to be verified/changed:

• Enable BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
• Enable Module_ITKVtkGlue
• Enable Module_ITKReview
• Enable ITK_USE_64BITS_IDS (should be enabled by default in newer ITK releases).
• Press "Configure". It will probably result in an error regarding missing VTK libraries.
• Set VTK_DIR to your vtk-bin-dir (Note that this will also determine the VTK library used for open_iA).
• Press "Configure" again.
• If you have enabled OpenVR support in VTK, you will be asked to specify OpenVR_INCLUDE_DIR and OpenVR_LIBRARY for the ITK build configuration (see Build Instructions VTK, you can and should re-use the OpenVR SDK download used there).

Optional CMake Settings

• Enable ITK_USE_GPU if you want to use GPU-accelerated versions of some filters. **Note: ** This requires OpenCL, see the according OpenCL Build Instructions
  • After enabling ITK_USE_GPU and pressing "Configure", either CMake doesn't find OpenCL and will print an error; or if it found OpenCL, you will want to check whether CMake found the correct OpenCL library to use:
  • Make sure OPENCL_INCLUDE_DIRS points to the include subdirectory of the OpenCL installation directory.
  • Make sure OPENCL_LIBRARIES points to the "OpenCL.lib" (Windows) / "libOpenCL.so" (Linux) situated inside the "lib" subfolder of the OpenCL installation directory (from the x86_64 / x64 subfolder).
  • Press "Configure" again. It should run through without errors regarding OpenCL.
• Enable Module_HigherOrderAccurateGradient (on some ITK versions this might require also enabling Module_SplitComponents) if you plan to use higher order gradient filters from within open_iA.
• Enable Module_SCIFIO for broader file version support. Note: Including this module has some side effects, such as getting an error message when loading files in open_iA if SCIFIO_PATH environment variable is not set to point to the jar files required by it; see also the CMake warning open_iA generates when building with ITK with SCIFIO enabled. Note that you do not require this flag to be enabled for open_iA; so unless you explicitly require the format support this library provides, we recommend disabling the flag.

Finishing configuration

• When using a "single-configuration" generator, such as "Ninja" or "Unix Makefiles", also set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to the build type you want to create (e.g., Debug if you plan to fix problems in open_iA, Release if you plan to use it productively and run long-running operations). For Visual Studio generators, you don't need to create/modify this setting (it is a multi-configuration generator, the option typically even will not exist).
• Press "Configure" one last time; if there still are errors, the corresponding messages should give you a hint as to what to do to resolve them.
• When there are no more errors, and "Configuring done" is shown at the bottom of the log, press "Generate".

Building

• On Windows with Visual Studio:
  • Click "Open Project" (check carefully that it opens with the correct Visual Studio version in case you have multiple versions installed!), or open itk.sln in itk-bin-dir in Visual Studio
  • Build desired configuration(s) (for example Debug), e.g. via "Build"->"Build Solution", or multiple configurations at once via "Build"->"Batch Build".
• On Unix/Linux:
  • Open a command line in itk-bin-dir.
  • Depending on the chosen generator:
    • If "Unix Makefiles", run make -j 8 - the 8 specifies the number of parallel compilations, you can adapt that to better match the number of (virtual) processor cores in your computer
    • If "Ninja, run ninja

If there are any problems, check the respective troubleshooting section:

• Windows Build Troubleshooting
• Linux Build Troubleshooting
• With Visual Studio 2019, you might run into the following error: fatal error C1090: PDB API call failed, error code '3':
  • This was reported as Visual Studio bug 552999 and bug 1262312. The problem should be fixed; if you still encounter it, here are two potential workarounds:
    • What helped in the past was to add " /FS" (without the quotes) to the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS and CMAKE_C_FLAGS in the CMake configuration steps above.
    • More recently, instead of " /FS", " /MP" needs to be added to the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS and CMAKE_C_FLAGS. On some systems, adding an environment variable "CL" with value "/MP" has helped, but on some affected systems this did not help, instead only adding it to the CMAKE_..._FLAGS has fixed the issue.

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