Software in This Repository
- COVISE and OpenCOVER
- Other Software
License
Support & Mailing Lists
Getting Binaries and Automated Installation
- macOS
- Windows
Getting the Source Code
- UNIX and Command Line
- Working with Git
  - UNIX
Building COVISE and OpenCOVER
Building Documentation
Invoking COVISE
- UNIX
- Windows
Source Code Organization

Software in This Repository

COVISE and OpenCOVER

[COVISE][1], the collaborative visualization and simulation environment, is a modular distributed visualization system. As its focus is on visualization of scientific data in virtual environments, it comprises the VR renderer [OpenCOVER][2]. COVISE development is headed by [HLRS][3]. It is portable to Windows and UNIX. We do regular builds on x86_64 Windows, Linux and macOS.

Other Software

Also included in this repository are [OddLOT][8], an OpenDRIVE editor, as well as vrmlExp, a VRML97 and X3D exporter for Autodesk 3ds Max.

License

If not stated otherwise, the source code in this repository is licensed under the LGPL v2.1. See lgpl-2.1.txt for details.

Support & Mailing Lists

As a user of COVISE, you might get answers to your questions on the [covise-users][4] mailing list. Please direct any questions related to installing/building/using COVISE there.

You can receive notifications of changes to COVISE on the [covise-commits][5] list.

Getting Binaries and Automated Installation

If you need OddLOT only, please have a look at [https://github.com/hbanzhaf/docker_covise][9].

macOS

There is a [Homebrew][6] formula for COVISE. If you have it on your system, then you can simply

  brew install hlrs-vis/tap/covise

This will install COVISE, OpenCOVER, and OddLOT with all their dependencies.

Windows

Windows binaries, which include COVISE, OpenCOVER and OddLOT, can be found on the [COVISE download page][7]. A separate installer for the VRML exporter vrmlExp is also available on the same webpage.

Getting the Source Code

UNIX and Command Line

Getting COVISE is as easy as

  git clone https://github.com/hlrs-vis/covise.git --recursive

Update your existing copy to the current version by

  git pull -r
  git submodule sync --recursive
  git submodule update --init --recursive # update submodules to latest required version

Working with Git

UNIX

  cd covise
  git pull -r #-r requests a rebase of your changes to avoid trivial branching
  git submodule update --init --recursive # update submodules to latest required version

Building COVISE and OpenCOVER

Build Requirements

The script scripts/install-deps.sh will help you to install the dependencies provided by your Linux distribution (Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS).

C++ compiler: C++11

On Windows, we currently use Visual Studio 2022 (VC17). GCC 5.3 and newer should work.
CMake: 3.1 or newer is required, but currently we suggest CMake 3.7 or newer
XercesC:
Qt: Qt 5 or 6 is required by the graphical user interface. Not everything, most importantly OddLOT, works with Qt 6 yet.

For Qt5, you need the following modules:
- Qt5Core
- Qt5Network
- Qt5Xml
- Qt5Widgets
- Qt5OpenGL
- Qt5WebKit
- Qt5WebKitWidgets
- Qt5Gui
- Qt5Svg
- Qt5PrintSupport
- Qt5UiTools
- Qt5Script
- Qt5ScriptTools
On Ubuntu 14.04, you should be able to install the required packages with this command: sudo apt-get install qttools5-dev qtscript5-dev libqt5scripttools5 libqt5svg5-dev libqt5opengl5-dev libqt5webkit5-dev
Boost: 1.52 and newer should work, following boost libraries are required:
- chrono
- date-time
- filesystem
- iostreams
- locale
- program-options
- regex
- serialization
- system
- thread When any of these are missing, you will only get a generic message, that "Boost" is missing. Thus beware! Ubuntu 14.04: sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev
Python: Python 3 is required for the GUI vr-prepare and for the scripting interface
GLEW: Used for OpenGL extension handling in Virvo (direct volume rendering) and OpenCOVER
OpenSceneGraph: 3.2 or newer is required, 3.4 or newer highly recommended for the VR and desktop renderer OpenCOVER

Optional Dependencies

JPEG Turbo
VTK Version 6 or newer is required.
Flex and Bison Lexer/Parser generators, required to build VRML plugin.

Install dependencies on Redhat8

dnf -y install xerces-c
dnf -y install xerces-c-devel

dnf -y install glibc-static

dnf -y install libXi-devel
dnf -y install glibc-utils

dnf -y install glut
dnf -y install glut-devel
dnf -y install boost
dnf -y install boost-devel

dnf -y install cmake   
dnf -y install cmake3  

dnf -y install qt5-qttools-devel
dnf -y install qt5-qtscript-devel
dnf -y install qt5-qtsvg-devel
dnf -y install qt5-qttools-static
dnf -y install glew-devel
dnf -y install libtiff-devel
dnf -y install qt5-qtquickcontrols
dnf -y install qt5-qtdeclarative-devel
dnf -y install qt5-qtlocation qt5-qtlocation-devel

dnf -y install boost-chrono
dnf -y install boost-date-time
dnf -y install boost-filesystem
dnf -y install boost-iostreams
dnf -y install boost-locale
dnf -y install boost-program-options
dnf -y install boost-regex
dnf -y install boost-serialization
dnf -y install boost-system
dnf -y install boost-thread
dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install qt5-qttools-static
dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install libGLEW
dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install glew-devel

dnf install http://repo.okay.com.mx/centos/8/x86_64/release/okay-release-1-1.noarch.rpm
dnf install gcc-gfortran
dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install libstdc++-static
dnf --enablerepo=PowerTools install boost-static
dnf install python3-pyqt5-sip
dnf install fuse-devel

Tracking Dependencies

CMake will show lists of met and unmet optional and required dependencies. You should check those and install additional prerequisites as needed.

Directory for Third Party Dependencies

COVISE is set up to automatically search for third party libraries in subdirectories of a directory pointed to by the environment variable EXTERNLIBS. You should install e.g. OpenSceneGraph into $EXTERNLIBS/openscenegraph, and it will be discovered during the build process.

Building on UNIX

  cd covise
  source .covise.sh #set environment variables
  make #invoke cmake followed by make

This command sequence sets environment variables necessary while building COVISE, invokes cmake for the COVISE project, and builds COVISE with OpenCOVER.

After an initial build, it is possible to invoke make from within subdirectories of covise/src.

No installation is required: you can use COVISE directly from the build tree.

Building only OpenCOVER

  cd covise
  source .covise.sh #set environment variables
  COVISE_CMAKE_OPTIONS=-DCOVISE_BUILD_ONLY_COVER=ON make #invoke cmake with provided options followed by make

Building only OddLOT

  cd covise
  source .covise.sh #set environment variables
  COVISE_CMAKE_OPTIONS=-DCOVISE_BUILD_ONLY_ODDLOT=ON make #invoke cmake with provided options followed by make

Building on Windows

Also on Windows, you should work from a command prompt:

   REM set COVISEDIR to location of your COVISE checkout
   set COVISEDIR=c:/src/covise
   REM set EXTERNLIBS to correct location of all your dependancies
   set EXTERNLIBSROOT=c:\src\externlibs
   cd %COVISEDIR%
   REM call winenv.bat with appropriate archsuffix for debug or release (tamarau for Visual Studio 2012 and zebu for 2015)
   call %COVISEDIR%\winenv.bat zebuopt
   mkdir build.covise
   cd build.covise
   cmake-gui ..
   REM open Visual Studio - either directly or with the button from CMake GUI
   devenv

To create a permanent link to a covise command prompt edit and execute Scripts/installCoviseCommandPrompt.bat

Building with VS Code

This is an experimental alternative to Visual Studio. You need VS Code with the C/C++ Extension Pack and the CMake Tools expansions installed. You also need the MSVC compiler (with ATL support) and one of the supported generators (Ninja, Visual Studio). An additional dependency is https://github.com/nlohmann/json which should be installed like COVISE's other dependencie

Covise

Install / Use

README

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