To build the latest release of OpenEXR, begin by downloading the source from the Releases page https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr/tarball/v2.5.1.
To build from the latest development version, which may not be stable,
download the master branch via
https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr/tarball/master, and extract the
contents via tar.
You can download the repository tarball file either via a browser, or
on the Linux/macOS via the command line using wget or curl:
% curl -L https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr/tarball/master | tar xv
This will produce a source directory named
openexr-openexr-<abbreviated-SHA-1-checksum>.
Alternatively, clone the GitHub repo directly via:
% git clone https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr.git
In the instructions that follow, we will refer to the top-level
directory of the source code tree as $source_directory.
Make sure these are installed on your system before building OpenEXR:
- OpenEXR requires CMake version 3.10 or newer
- NB: CMake 3.12 is required for configuring to build static and shared libraries in the same config (object library support)
- C++ compiler that supports C++11
- Zlib (auto compiled if not found)
- Imath (auto compiled if not found)
The instructions that follow describe building OpenEXR with CMake, but you can also build and install OpenEXR via the autoconf bootstrap/configure utilities, described below.
To build via CMake, first choose a location for the build directory,
which we will refer to as $build_directory.
% mkdir $build_directory
% cd $build_directory
% cmake $source_directory
% make
% make install
Note that the CMake configuration prefers to apply an out-of-tree
build process, since there may be multiple build configurations
(i.e. debug and release), one per folder, all pointing at once source
tree, hence the $build_directory noted above, referred to in CMake
parlance as the build directory. You can place this directory
wherever you like.
See the CMake Configuration Options section below for the most common
configuration options especially the install directory. Note that with
no arguments, as above, make install installs the header files in
/usr/local/include, the object libraries in /usr/local/lib, and the
executable programs in /usr/local/bin.
Under Windows, if you are using a command line-based setup, such as
cygwin, you can of course follow the above. For Visual Studio, cmake
generators are "multiple configuration", so you don't even have to set
the build type, although you will most likely need to specify the
install location. Install Directory By default, make install
installs the headers, libraries, and programs into /usr/local, but you
can specify a local install directory to cmake via the
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable:
% cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$install_directory
By default the installed libraries follow a pattern for how they are named. This is done to enable multiple versions of the library to be installed and targeted by different builds depending on the needs of the project. A simple example of this would be to have different versions of the library installed to allow for applications targeting different VFX Platform years to co-exist.
If you are building dynamic libraries, once you have configured, built, and installed the libraries, you should see the following pattern of symlinks and files in the install lib folder:
libHalf.so -> libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so
libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so -> libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so.$SO_MAJOR_VERSION
libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so.$SO_MAJOR_VERSION -> libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so.$SO_FULL_VERSION
libHalf-$LIB_SUFFIX.so.$SO_FULL_VERSION (actual file)
You can configure the LIB_SUFFIX, although it defaults to the library
major and minor version, so in the case of a 2.3 library, it would default
to 2_3. You would then link your programs against this versioned library
to have maximum safety (i.e. -lHalf-2_3), and the pkg-config and cmake
configuration files included with find_package should set this up.
OpenEXR consists of a number of libraries - OpenEXR, OpenEXRUtil,
IlmThread, Iex, and IexMath. To build and install OpenEXR, take care
to set the CMAKE_SYSTEM_PREFIX to the directory in which you
installed any custom Imath and/or zlib and CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to
the directory in which to install OpenEXR:
% mkdir $build_directory
% cd $build_directory
% cmake -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_PREFIX=$install_directory \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$install_directory \
$source_directory/OpenEXR
% cmake --build . --target install --config Release
The libraries in OpenEXR follow the standard cmake setting of
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS to control whether to build static or shared
libraries. However, there also exists an option
OPENEXR_BUILD_BOTH_STATIC_SHARED to enable building both shared
and static libraries as part of one configuration, in addition to
other customization options. Please see cmake/OpenEXRSetup.cmake for
these options.
If you are interested in controlling custom namespace declarations or
similar options, you are encouraged to look at the CMakeLists.txt
infrastructure. In particular, there has been an attempt to centralize
the settings into a common place to more easily see all of them in a
text editor. For IlmBase, this is config/IlmBaseSetup.cmake inside the
IlmBase tree. For OpenEXR, the settings will similarly be found in
cmake/OpenEXRSetup.cmake. As per usual, these settings can also be
seen and/or edited using any of the various gui editors for working
with cmake such as ccmake, cmake-gui, as well as some of the
IDEs in common use.
When trying to either cross-compile for a different platform, or for tasks such as specifying a compiler set to match the VFX reference platform (https://vfxplatform.com/), cmake provides the idea of a toolchain which may be useful instead of having to remember a chain of configuration options. It also means that platform-specific compiler names and options are out of the main cmake file, providing better isolation.
A toolchain file is simply just a cmake script that sets all the compiler and related flags and is run very early in the configuration step to be able to set all the compiler options and such for the discovery that cmake performs automatically. These options can be set on the command line still if that is clearer, but a theoretical toolchain file for compiling for VFX Platform 2015 is provided in the source tree at cmake/Toolchain-Linux-VFX_Platform15.cmake which will hopefully provide a guide how this might work.
For cross-compiling for additional platforms, there is also an included sample script in cmake/Toolchain-mingw.cmake which shows how cross compiling from Linux for Windows may work. The compiler names and paths may need to be changed for your environment.
More documentation:
- Toolchains: https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.12/manual/cmake-toolchains.7.html
- Cross compiling: https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/community/wikis/doc/cmake/
The default CMake configuration options are stored in
cmake/OpenEXRSetup.cmake. To see a complete set of option
variables, run:
% cmake -LAH $source_directory
You can customize these options three ways:
- Modify the
.cmakefiles in place. - Use the UI
cmake-guiorccmake. - Specify them as command-line arguments when you invoke cmake.
-
CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS
Enable/Disable output of compile commands during generation. Default is OFF.
-
CMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE
Echo all compile commands during make. Default is OFF.
-
OPENEXR_CXX_STANDARD
C++ standard to compile against. This obeys the global
CMAKE_CXX_STANDARDbut doesn’t force the global setting to enable sub-project inclusion. Default is14.
-
ILMBASE_LIB_SUFFIX
Append the given string to the end of all the IlmBase libraries. Default is
-<major>_<minor>version string. Please see the section on library names -
OPENEXR_LIB_SUFFIX
Append the given string to the end of all the OpenEXR libraries. Default is
-<major>_<minor>version string. Please see the section on library names
-
ILMBASE_IEX_NAMESPACE
Public namespace alias for Iex. Default is
Iex. -
ILMBASE_ILMTHREAD_NAMESPACE
Public namespace alias for IlmThread. Default is
IlmThread. -
ILMBASE_IMATH_NAMESPACE
Public namespace alias for Imath. Default is
Imath. -
ILMBASE_INTERNAL_IEX_NAMESPACE
Real namespace for Iex that will end up in compiled symbols. Default is
Iex\_<major>\_<minor>. -
ILMBASE_INTERNAL_ILMTHREAD_NAMESPACE
Real namespace for IlmThread that will end up in compiled symbols. Default is
IlmThread\_<major>\_<minor>. -
ILMBASE_INTERNAL_IMATH_NAMESPACE
Real namespace for Imath that will end up in compiled symbols. Default is
Imath\_<major>\_<minor>. -
ILMBASE_NAMESPACE_CUSTOM
Whether the namespace has been customized (so external users know)
-
OPENEXR_IMF_NAMESPACE
Public namespace alias for Imath. Default is
Imf. -
OPENEXR_INTERNAL_IMF_NAMESPACE
Real namespace for Imath that will end up in compiled symbols. Default is
Imf\_<major>\_<minor>. -
OPENEXR_NAMESPACE_CUSTOM
Whether the namespace has been customized (so external users know)
These linting options are experimental, and primarily for developer-only use at this time.
-
ILMBASE_USE_CLANG_TIDY
Enable clang-tidy for IlmBase libraries, if it is available. Default is OFF.
-
OPENEXR_USE_CLANG_TIDY
Enable clang-tidy for OpenEXR libraries, if it is available. Default is OFF.
-
BUILD_TESTING
Build the testing tree. Default is ON. Note that this causes the test suite to be compiled, but it is not executed.
-
OPENEXR_RUN_FUZZ_TESTS
Controls whether to include the fuzz tests (very slow). Default is OFF.
See the cmake documentation for more information (https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.12/)
-
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE
For builds when not using a multi-configuration generator. Available values:
Debug,Release,RelWithDebInfo,MinSizeRel -
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
This is the primary control whether to build static libraries or shared libraries / dlls (side note: technically a convention, hence not an official
CMAKE\_variable, it is defined within cmake and used everywhere to control this static / shared behavior) -
For forcing particular compilers to match VFX platform requirements
** CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER**
** CMAKE_C_COMPILER**
** CMAKE_LINKER**
All the related cmake compiler flags (i.e. CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS, CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG)
** CMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH**
For non-standard install locations where you don’t want to have to set
LD_LIBRARY_PATHto use them
If you have ninja (https://ninja-build.org/) installed, it is faster than make. You can generate ninja files using cmake when doing the initial generation:
% cmake -G “Ninja” ..
If you would like to confirm compile flags, you don’t have to specify the verbose configuration up front, you can instead run
% make VERBOSE=1