Building ifm3d from source on Windows

Following Instruction are for ifm3d-v1.0.0 and above which provide full support for O3R devices. if you are using O3D/O3X device please use ifm3d-v0.20.3 and follow these instructions

This tutorial details how to compile the ifm3d library and its dependencies on a Windows platform using Visual Studio and CMake.

Dependencies

Build tools

CMake v3.11.0 or newer (also available through the Visual Studio installer)
Git for Windows (also available through the Visual Studio installer)
Microsoft Visual Studio version 2017 or 2019. The free ‘Community’ edition is sufficient. Be sure to select the ‘Desktop development with C++’ workflow.

Source Dependencies

ifm3d depends on several additional libraries (curl, xmlrpc-c, and GoogleTest) which are not available as binary packages on Windows.

Building source dependencies with ifm3d

ifm3d from version 0.90.4 onward provides BUILD_IN_DEPS option to CMake configure command, which fetches the required dependencies and builds them with ifm3d. After a successful first installation, the user can disable BUILD_IN_DEPS option and can use the installed dependencies for future builds of the ifm3d.

Following instructions detail how to build ifm3d along with its dependencies.

⚠ The code on the branch main is updated nightly and contains the latest changes to the library. It is typically a work in progress.
⚠ We recommend using tagged versions for your builds, to ensure consistency between builds. The latest tagged version can be found here.

Open Command Prompt and execute following instructions

#set the environment variables
set IFM3D_CMAKE_GENERATOR="Visual Studio 16 2019"
set IFM3D_BUILD_DIR=C:\ifm3d
set CONFIG=Release #set to Debug for debug binaries

#make the working dir
mkdir %IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%

# Clone the repository
cd %IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%
git clone https://github.com/ifm/ifm3d.git --branch v1.0.0
cd %IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%\ifm3d

# Configure
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G %IFM3D_CMAKE_GENERATOR% -DCMAKE_WINDOWS_EXPORT_ALL_SYMBOLS=ON -DBUILD_SDK_PKG=ON -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=%IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%\install -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=%CONFIG% -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=%IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%\install -DBUILD_IN_DEPS=ON ..

# Build ifm3d and dependencies
cmake --build . --config %CONFIG% --target ALL_BUILD

# install
cmake --build . --config %CONFIG% --target install

On successful execution of install step, user can disable the BUILD_IN_DEPS flag by appending -DBUILD_IN_DEPS=OFF to CMake configure step, this will avoid building dependencies on every clean build.

Running ifm3d command line tools

After Building ifm3d, the binary files will be installed at %IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%\install\bin. To run the ifm3d tool you need to add this directory to your path.

If built targeting Visual Studio 2017/2019:

$ set PATH=%IFM3D_BUILD_DIR%\install\bin;%PATH%

After that you should be able to run the ifm3d tool

$ ifm3d

Using ifm3d-playground projects

After installing the ifm3d, one can use ifm3d-playground example available on GitHub, which shows basic CMake configuration required for using installed ifm3d libraries.