2. Installation

RIVET is available at https://github.com/rivetTDA/rivet.

2.1. Requirements

Before starting to build RIVET, you will need to have the following installed:

  • A C++ compiler (g++ or clang are what we use)
  • CMake
  • Qt 5
  • Boost (version 1.58 or newer)

Below we give step-by-step instructions for installing these required dependencies and building RIVET on Ubuntu and Mac OS X. Building RIVET on Windows is not yet supported, but it is possible to build RIVET using the Bash shell on Windows 10.

2.2. Building On Ubuntu

2.2.1. Installing Dependencies

On Ubuntu, installation of dependencies should be relatively simple:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cmake qt5-default qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools libboost-all-dev

2.2.2. Building RIVET

After cloning to $RIVET_DIR:

cd $RIVET_DIR
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
cd ..
qmake
make

You may see compiler warnings during either of the make executions. These can safely be ignored.

After this, you will have two executables built: the viewer (rivet_GUI), and the computation engine (rivet_console).

It is then necessary to move or symlink the console into the same folder where the viewer was built. On Ubuntu and most other systems:

ln -s build/rivet_console

In the future, all these steps will be automated so that a single cmake build will create both executables, and put everything in the right place.

2.3. Building On Mac OS X

2.3.1. Installing Dependencies

First, ensure you have the XCode Command Line Tools installed by running:

# only needed if you've never run it before, (running it again doesn't hurt anything)
# installs XCode Command Line Tools
xcode-select --install

If a popup window appears, click the “Install” button, and accept the license agreement.

Next, install XCode from the App Store, if you’ve not done so already. You will also need accept the license agreement for XCode, which you can do from the command line by running:

sudo xcodebuild -license

To install the remaining packages, we recommend using the package manager [Homebrew](http://brew.sh/). To install Homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Now install cmake, qt5, and boost:

brew install cmake qt5 boost

2.3.2. Building RIVET

Please note that part of the build requires the use of qmake, and you might very well have a version of qmake in your PATH that is not for Qt 5, but for an older version. In the steps below, we assume $QT_BASE is the installation folder for Qt 5.

As of the time of writing, brew installs qmake in a version-specific folder under /usr/local/Cellar/qt5/[my_version_#]/bin, and does not add it to your PATH. You can find the folder where qt5 is installed using this command:

brew info qt5 | grep Cellar | cut -d' ' -f1

In fact, let’s store that in a variable so we can use it below:

export QT_BASE=`brew info qt5 | grep Cellar | cut -d' ' -f1`

If you haven’t done so already, now clone RIVET.

In order to ensure that qmake can find where Boost is installed, add the following lines to the bottom of the file RIVET.pro, changing the paths in the last three lines, if necessary, to match the location and version of your copy of Boost.

CONFIG += c++11
QMAKE_CFLAGS += -std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ -mmacosx-version-min=10.9
QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += -std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ -mmacosx-version-min=10.9

LIBS += -L"/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.63.0/lib"
INCLUDEPATH += "/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.63.0/include"

LIBS += -L"/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.63.0/lib" -lboost_random

Assuming that the RIVET has been cloned to $RIVET_DIR:

cd $RIVET_DIR
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
cd ..
$QT_BASE/bin/qmake
make

You may see compiler warnings during either of the make executions. These can safely be ignored.

After this, you will have two executables built: the viewer (rivet_GUI.app), and the computation engine (rivet_console).

It is then necessary to move or symlink the console into the same folder where the viewer was built:

cd rivet_GUI.app/Contents/MacOS
ln -s ../../../build/rivet_console

In the future, all these steps will be automated so that a single cmake build will create both executables, and put everything in the right place.

2.3.3. Troubleshooting

Our experience has been that if Homebrew is installed before XCode, then running qmake during the build process returns an error:

Project ERROR: Could not resolve SDK Path for 'macosx'

To solve the problem, try running:

sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

2.4. Building in the Windows Subsystem for Linux

If your operating system is Windows 10, you can install RIVET using the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which allows you to run Linux software in Windows 10. To install the Windows Subsystem for Linux, follow these instructions from Microsoft. Alternately, see this page on How-To Geek. This will give you a console running Ubuntu (or the Linux distribution of your choice) inside of Windows 10.

Next, open the Linux console and install dependencies. Use the following command to install cmake, a compiler, and Qt5:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cmake build-essential qt5-default qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools libboost-all-dev

In order to use the RIVET viewer, you must install an X server such as Xming.

It is probably also necessary to set an environment variable, as follows:

export DISPLAY=:0

This environment variable will be reset when you close the Bash shell. To avoid having to run the line above when you reopen the shell, add this line to the end of the file ~/.bashrc.

You are now ready to build RIVET. Follow the instructions in the section Building On Ubuntu.