Build requirements

The prerequisites for building OVITO from source are:

Tool/Package

Requirement

Notes

C++ compiler

required

Support for C++17 language standard is required

CMake

required

The build system used by OVITO (CMake 3.12 or newer required)

Git

required

The distributed version control system needed to retrieve the source code

The library dependencies are:

Library

Requirement

Notes

Qt

required

Used for OVITO’s graphical user interface (version 6.2 or higher)

zlib

optional

Required for reading and writing compressed files.

Boost

required

OVITO uses some utility classes from this C++ library.

libssh

optional

Used by OVITO’s built-in SSH client for remote data access.

ffmpeg

optional

Video processing libraries used by OVITO to write movie files.

libnetcdf

optional

Required by the Amber/NetCDF file reader/writer plugin

The sources of the following third-party libraries are included in the OVITO source distribution and get compiled automatically as part of the build process:

Library

Notes

muparser

A math expression parser library.

Qwt

For plotting and data visualization.

Voro++

Voronoi cell construction routine required by the Voronoi analysis modifier.

KISS FFT

Required by the Spatial correlation function plugin.