Installing VTK in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Support
1

Hello all I am trying to downgrade my version of VTK from 6.3.0 to 5.10.1 so that I can use some python utilities (namely pyFoam) however when I try to compile the VTK5.10.1 I get the following error:

CMake Error at CMake/vtkCompilerExtras.cmake:40 (if):
if given arguments:

"cc (Ubuntu 7.5.0-3ubuntu1~18.04) 7.5.0

Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This is free software" " see the source for copying conditions. There is
NO

warranty" " not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE." “VERSION_GREATER” “4.2.0” “AND” “BUILD_SHARED_LIBS” “AND”
“HAVE_GCC_VISIBILITY” “AND” “VTK_USE_GCC_VISIBILITY” “AND” “NOT” “MINGW”
“AND” “NOT” “CYGWIN”

Unknown arguments specified
Call Stack (most recent call first):
CMakeLists.txt:73 (INCLUDE)

I would be greatly appreciative if anyone could please explain the issue and how I would resolve it, thanks in advance

2

Older VTK versions detected the compiler version manually. There is a regex in CMake/vtkCompilerExtras.cmake that will need expanded to detect the compiler version.

3

Thanks for your reply Ben I have been able to locate the

CMake/vtkCompilerExtras.cmake

file, and I have Identified the REGEX.

# Now check if we can use visibility to selectively export symbols
  exec_program(${CMAKE_C_COMPILER} ARGS --version OUTPUT_VARIABLE
    _gcc_version_info)
  string (REGEX MATCH "[345]\\.[0-9]\\.[0-9]" 
    _gcc_version "${_gcc_version_info}")
  if(NOT _gcc_version)
    string (REGEX REPLACE ".*\\(GCC\\).* ([34]\\.[0-9]) .*" "\\1.0" 
      _gcc_version "${_gcc_version_info}")
  endif()
  
  # GCC visibility support, on by default and in testing.
  check_cxx_compiler_flag(-fvisibility=hidden HAVE_GCC_VISIBILITY)
  option(VTK_USE_GCC_VISIBILITY "Use GCC visibility support if available." ON)
  mark_as_advanced(VTK_USE_GCC_VISIBILITY)

  if(${_gcc_version} VERSION_GREATER 4.2.0 AND BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
    AND HAVE_GCC_VISIBILITY AND VTK_USE_GCC_VISIBILITY
    AND NOT MINGW AND NOT CYGWIN)
    # Should only be set if GCC is newer than 4.2.0
    set(VTK_ABI_CXX_FLAGS "-fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden")
  else()
    set(VTK_ABI_CXX_FLAGS "")
  endif()

Would you be so kind as to explicitly inform me how I would expand it to detect the compiler version my compiler version is GCC 7.5.0 btw

thanks in advance

4

This should use [3-9] instead of [34] (which will work up to GCC 9).

5

Hi Ben,

Thank you so much your solution worked I changed both REGEX to 3-9 and it work perfectly I really appreciate your help.

Edit: I was able to run the ccmake configuration and then ran make install command but then got the following error message:

/home/mn14cat/VTK5.10.1/Common/vtkMath.cxx: In static member function ‘static int vtkMath::GetScalarTypeFittingRange(double, double, double, double)’:
/home/mn14cat/VTK5.10.1/Common/vtkMath.cxx:2839:5: error: narrowing conversion of ‘9223372036854775807’ from ‘long int’ to ‘double’ inside { } [-Wnarrowing]
};
^
/home/mn14cat/VTK5.10.1/Common/vtkMath.cxx:2839:5: error: narrowing conversion of ‘18446744073709551615’ from ‘long unsigned int’ to ‘double’ inside { } [-Wnarrowing]
/home/mn14cat/VTK5.10.1/Common/vtkMath.cxx:2839:5: error: narrowing conversion of ‘9223372036854775807’ from ‘long long int’ to ‘double’ inside { } [-Wnarrowing]
/home/mn14cat/VTK5.10.1/Common/vtkMath.cxx:2839:5: error: narrowing conversion of ‘18446744073709551615’ from ‘long long unsigned int’ to ‘double’ inside { } [-Wnarrowing]
Common/CMakeFiles/vtkCommon.dir/build.make:1354: recipe for target ‘Common/CMakeFiles/vtkCommon.dir/vtkMath.cxx.o’ failed
make[2]: *** [Common/CMakeFiles/vtkCommon.dir/vtkMath.cxx.o] Error 1
CMakeFiles/Makefile2:3070: recipe for target ‘Common/CMakeFiles/vtkCommon.dir/all’ failed
make[1]: *** [Common/CMakeFiles/vtkCommon.dir/all] Error 2
Makefile:145: recipe for target ‘all’ failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

I have tried to follow your advice on another thread from 2016 with a similar problem where you specified :

“what happens if you turn use -std=c++03 (gnu++14 is the
default in GCC 6)?”

I have looked in both the vtkMath.cxx and vtkMath.h files to try to implement this change but an not quite sure how to go about doing this?

6

There may be many such errors when compiling such old code with new compilers. Trying to use c++03 is likely to be the easiest path to getting a build. The next best would be using a gcc 4.x if that would work.

7

Hi Ben, really sorry to be a pain but when you suggest

“Trying to use c++03 is likely to be the easiest path to getting a build”.

could you please explain in as much detail how I would go about doing this?

many Thanks

8

This just means to add the -std=c++03 flag when compiling VTK-5.10 with g++. In other words, make sure that your CMakeCache.txt contains this:

CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS:STRING="-std=c++03"

This will allow g++ to accept old code (like VTK-5.10) that doesn’t conform to the newer c++11 or c++14 standards.

1 Like
9

Thank you very much David I appreciate the help! I was able to sucessfully build build VTK5.10. also thank you Ben.