Hugin Compiling Windows with SDK

This article gives step-by-step instructions for building hugin from a source code snapshot using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition and precompiled dependencies. That is the recommended way to build hugin for Windows, and the only way that has worked for me. It also shows how to build enblend 3, which hugin now requires, with the same tools.

IMPORTANT:	Since the introduction of new dependencies with the Google Summer of Code 2008, these instructions only work for SVN revisions prior to 3479. For later revisions, you'll need an updated SDK which is currently not yet available.

Bear in mind that a source snapshot of hugin is a transient stage in an incomplete and rapidly evolving package, so may have a short useful life, and will contain bugs and defects. Your main purpose in building one should be to help find, report, and maybe correct some of those.

Background

The hugin build is based on cmake, a cross platform makefile generator. On Windows, cmake can generate project files for various Microsoft Visual Studio toolsets, from the same specifications it uses to create makefiles on other platforms. The current release (cmake 2.4.7) only supports VC 2003 and 2005; the unreleased 2.4.8 and the current development trunk (2.5) support VC 2008 too, so you will need one of those.

Pablo has recently published an sdk containing all the support components needed to build hugin and enblend (and AutoPano-SIFT-C) on Windows. Version 1 of the sdk has two flavors, one built with Visual C++ 2003 Express, the other with VC 2008 Express. Version 2, which is more complete, is only for VC 2008 at present.

If if you already have VC 2003 (and the corresponding Windows Platform SDK) installed you might want to try that. Otherwise use VC 2008, which is currently available and easier to install because the Platform SDK is bundled. You can install VC 2008 Express beside other Microsoft compiler versions, even professional ones, without damaging either toolset. The enblend source tree has projects for building with both the 2003 and 2008 tools (also 2005 but there is no sdk for that).

The following instructions are for starting from scratch on a Windows PC without any software building tools installed. If you already have some of these things installed, you will need to take care that the right tools and components are used. It is vitally important that all object code is generated by the same compiler version and targeted to the same VC runtime library.

The recommended Tortoise archive clients work through the Windows File Explorer: right-click a target directory and follow the popup menus.

Get Tools

1) install Visual C++ 2008 Express

  http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/

2) install cmake -- not the currently released version 2.4.7, but either

  version 2.4.8 (stable, works)
  2.4.8 link to a 404 page ... 17-Aug-2008
  or version 2.5 (may not be stable)
  http://www.cmake.org/HTML/Download.html
  Pending release of 2.5, follow the link "nightly CVS binary" and download the .exe installer for a recent snapshot (cmake-2.5.20080117-win32-x86.exe worked for me).  

  version 2.6.1 (untested)
  http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.6/cmake-2.6.1-win32-x86.exe

3) install Tortoise CVS and SVN clients

  http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=48103
  http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=138498

Get hugin SDK

4) download the precompiled sdk

  http://hugin.panotools.org/sdk/MSVC/hugin_enblend_sdk_msvc2008_v2.7z
  unpack it into new directory huginbase with winrar or 7zip.

NOTE The version 1 sdks, which are zip files, lack the unix utilities (unxutils) required for hugin installaiton. You get that at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9328.

Build enblend 3

5) check out enblend 3 source tree into huginbase. Right click on huginbase in Windows Explorer and select "CVS Checkout..." from the popup menu. Enter the following incantation into the CVSROOT: box in the resulting dialog and click OK.

  :pserver:anonymous@enblend.cvs.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/enblend

If OK is grayed out, click Fetch list..., select enblend module and then click OK.

The result should be a new directory, huginbase/enblend, containing the source tree.

6) open huginbase/enblend/enblend_msvc2008.sln with Visual Studio 2008 Express. Change the target configuration to 'release' (build menu, configuration manager). Click build solution. After it completes, copy enblend/INSTALLDIR into huginbase/enblend-3.1/. The hugin install script expects this directory.

Build hugin

7) check out hugin source tree into huginbase. Make a new folder called hugin inside huginbase. Right click on huginbase/hugin in Windows Explorer, select "SVN Checkout...", enter this source URL, set target directory to "hugin" and click OK.

  https://hugin.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/hugin/hugin/trunk

The result should be a new directory, huginbase/hugin, containing the source tree. Write down the reported SVN revision number, you will need it later.

8) Start the cmake gui (cmakesetup.exe). To ensure that the environment is set right, run cmakesetup.exe from the VC 2008 command shell (available under the Windows Start Menu) - essential if you have other compilers installed. You might want to create a desktop shortcut that does this with one click.

Set cmake's source code directory to huginbase/hugin and its build directory to huginbase/hugin-build (this will create a new directory for the build). Click Configure and tell it to use Visual C++ 2008. Cmake then checks the build tools and if that goes well does the first round of searching for components. When done it displays a list of configuration variable settings, on a red background. Click "Show Advanced Values" to display all of them.

This is when you get to correct anything that needs correcting. First, set HUGIN_WC_REVISION to the SVN revision number (which should be automatic but currently is not on Windows). And set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to "Release". It is an error to leave HUGIN_WC_REVISION blank, and you will get a warning message later if CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is "Debug". Heed it.

Next, check that all component pathnames start at huginbase. Cmake may have found some things installed in standard places on your system; but it should only be using the ones in the sdk. To correct a pathname, click on it and either type in the right one or click '...' to pop a fileselector. Look out for values with "_NOT_FOUND" in them; these may indicate problems with your directory names or structure. You will need to set ENBLEND_EXE_DIR to huginbase/enblend-3.1/INSTALLDIR that that was created when you built enblend. Also, you need to set HUGIN_BUILDER and HUGIN_BUILDATE -- this is you name and date of the build that will appear on application splash screen.

When you are satisfied the paths are right, click Configure again, and Cmake will try to validate the variables. That might set some new ones, which will appear in red. Recheck all values, even the grey ones. If a variable keeps coming up wrong try deleting it from cache (right click on name pops menu) and configure again; this is often necessary to trigger a new search. Keep fixing and clicking Configure until everything is OK. Then click OK to generate the project files.

9) Open hugin.sln in the build directory with Visual Studio 2008 Express and wait while it loads and checks all the projects. Then select a target configuration and click "build solution". After a long time, and many warnings, you should get a successful build.

10) Build the INSTALL project. This should put a complete hugin installation in huginbase/hugin-build/INSTALL/FILES.

NOTE any missing file stops the install script, leaving the installation more or less incomplete. If this happens, first look at the install scripts, cmake_install.cmake (several places in the hugin-build tree) to identify all the files that were not found (paths with "_NOT_FOUND" in them). If you can find all of them, put them where the install script expects them -- hugin/cmakemodules/winbundle.cmake will help indentify those places. You can't just build INSTALL again, because the files are searched for at configuration time, so the install scripts will still contain invalid pathnames until you run cmakesetup again. Exit Visual Studio first, since all project files must be rebuilt. It may be necessary to delete pathnames of the failed places (such as enblend-3.1) from cache to ensure everything gets regenerated. Then Configure, OK, open the new hugin.sln and build INSTALL.

Updating the hugin build

To update your source tree to to the latest revision, right click on huginbase/hugin in Windows Explorer and select "SVN Update". Remember to note the revision number.

Check if there is a new release of the sdk, and if so, download and install it.

Then you have to run cmakesetup again. Proceed as in 8) above, but click "Delete Cache" before "Configure", so that the new configuration gets built from scratch.

Remember to "Clean" or "Rebuild" the entire solution in MSVC.

Installing hugin on Windows

Directory hugin-build/INSTALL/FILES contains a complete, self-contained hugin installation. You can use this as is, or copy it to a directory of your choice if you wish to delete the build tree (it is a good idea to put the the SVN version number in the name of that directory. e.g. FILES becomes "hugin_0.7.0.2766"). You should create a shortcut to hugin.exe on your desktop (note you can start new projects by dragging and dropping groups of files on the shortcut). You may also want to associate the new hugin.exe with the hugin project file (.pto) file extension.

This way of installing can be undone simply by deleting the files. It will not break any other hugin installation that may be on your system. However, note that all instances of hugin do share the same persistent settings, so options you set in one version will affect the others, too.

The source tree and sdk contain support for building Windows Installer (.msi) packages with War Setup and/or Innosetup. At present these are under development and could potentially damage your Registry and/or prior installations of hugin, so I would advise not using them until a stable release is issued.

The hugin team periodically publishes "snapshot" builds for testing. The Windows versions of these come in two forms, as a self-installing archive that automates the simple "copy files" method described above, and as a Windows Installer package.

Some things that don't work

Trying to target the dll versions of the Visual C runtimes. Only the static C libraries (libcmt, libcmtd) will do. You can't mix static and dll runtimes, so all (static) dependencies must also have been compiled with /MT or /MTd. While it might be possible to use dll versions of some of the support libraries, such as tiff or OpenEXR, it is safest to keep a strict policy of "static libraries only".

Trying to use dependencies built with a different compiler. For all practical purposes, Microsoft runtime libraries are now usable with only one compiler version. Although linking code built with more than one compiler sometimes seems to work, the resulting program is likely to fail.

Trying to link Boost libraries of a different source version than the Boost headers. Boost takes some trouble to lock object code to source version as well as compiler version, so it is rarely possible (and always a mistake) to do this.

Occasionally a build step fails mysteriously, that has succeeded before. The main cause of this is a file being marked in the Windows filesystem as in use when a tool tries to open it. On a slow, heavily loaded machine, the filesystem may not update a closed file's status quickly enough -- solution: reduce the load. On any machine, Google Desktop Search (or other automatic indexer) may grab a recently updated file and really have it open -- solution: pause or disable indexing and retry the build step.

--Tksharpless 16:42, 23 January 2008 (CET)