Building OVITO on Linux — OVITO User Manual 3.16.0 documentation

# Building OVITO on Linux

The following instructions have been written for Ubuntu Linux 22.04 and compatible distributions.

## Installing dependencies

First, install the required build tools and third-party libraries as follows:

Note

OVITO requires the Qt cross-platform framework (version 6.3 or higher). We recommend using the newest release of the Qt framework, which is available as a download from https://www.qt.io/download. Alternatively, you can use the Qt6 development files provided by the package manager of your Linux distro.

Ubuntu / Debian:

      sudo apt-get install build-essential git cmake-curses-gui qt6-base-dev libqt6svg6-dev \
            libboost-dev libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev \
            libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libnetcdf-dev libhdf5-dev libhdf5-serial-dev \
            libglu1-mesa-dev ninja-build \
            libssh-dev python3-sphinx python3-sphinx-rtd-theme

openSUSE:

      sudo zypper install git cmake gcc-c++ qt6-concurrent-devel qt6-core-devel qt6-gui-devel \
             qt6-network-devel qt6-dbus-devel qt6-printsupport-devel \
             qt6-widgets-devel qt6-xml-devel qt6-svg-devel libavutil-devel libavresample-devel \
             libavfilter-devel libavcodec-devel libavdevice-devel netcdf-devel libssh-devel \
             boost-devel hdf5-devel libswscale-devel ninja

Fedora:

      # Activate the RPMfusion repository providing the ffmpeg package (optional):
      sudo dnf install \
       https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm \
       https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

      sudo dnf install git cmake g++ qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel boost-devel zlib-devel ninja-build \
                       ffmpeg-devel netcdf-devel libssh-devel \
                       python3-sphinx python3-sphinx_rtd_theme

RHEL / CentOS:

      sudo yum install epel-release
      sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ cmake qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel qt6-qttools-devel \
                           boost-devel netcdf-devel hdf5-devel libssh-devel

  These RHEL/CentOS packages allow building only a basic version of OVITO without video encoding support and documentation. In order to build a complete version, other dependencies must be installed manually.

## Getting the source code

Download the source repository of OVITO into a new subdirectory named `ovito/`:

    git clone --recursive https://gitlab.com/stuko/ovito.git

## Compiling OVITO

Create a build directory and let CMake generate a Makefile:

    cd ovito
    cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

If this step fails, rerun CMake using the --fresh flag to initiate a clean configuration and adjust the build options as necessary.

To build OVITO run:

    cmake --build build --parallel

If this step is successful, the ovito executable can be found in the directory `ovito/build/bin/`. The command cmake --build build --target documentation builds the HTML pages of the user manual (requires Sphinx Python package and Sphinx RTD theme).