Manual compilation#
You can also compile Splash by hand, especially if you are curious about its internals or want to tinker with the code (or even, who knows, contribute!). Note that although what follows compiles the develop branch, it is more likely to contain bugs alongside new features / optimizations so if you experience crash you can try with the master branch.
Installing dependencies#
The packages necessary to compile Splash are the following:
Ubuntu 20.04 and newer#
sudo apt install build-essential git-core cmake cmake-extras libxrandr-dev \
libxi-dev mesa-common-dev libgsl0-dev libatlas3-base libgphoto2-dev \
libz-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev python3-dev yasm portaudio19-dev \
python3-numpy libopencv-dev libjsoncpp-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev \
libavutil-dev libswscale-dev ninja-build libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev
# Non mandatory libraries needed to link against system libraries only
sudo apt install libglm-dev libsnappy-dev libzmq3-dev
Fedora 39#
If not already installed, add the RPM Fusion additional package repository (needed for some of the following dependencies). This only adds the free repository:
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
Then install the dependencies:
sudo dnf install gcc g++ cmake gsl-devel atlas-devel libgphoto2-devel python3-devel \
yasm portaudio-devel python3-numpy opencv-devel jsoncpp-devel libuuid-devel \
libX11-devel libXrandr-devel libXinerama-devel libXcursor-devel libXi-devel \
mesa-libGL-devel libavcodec-free-devel libavformat-free-devel libavutil-free-devel \
libswscale-free-devel ninja-build wayland-devel libxkbcommon-devel
Archlinux#
Archlinux support is not well maintained, please signal any issue.
pacman -Sy git cmake ninja gcc yasm pkgconfig libxi libxinerama libxrandr libxcursor jsoncpp \
mesa glm gsl libgphoto2 python3 portaudio zip zlib ffmpeg opencv qt6-base vtk hdf5 glew \
libxkbcommon fmt
Windows#
On Windows, you need to install a development environment to be able to run Splash. Fortunately there are some very nice ones, and for Splash we use MSYS2. Install it as explained on their website, then run MSYS2 UCRT64 from the Start menu. This will give you a terminal with the correct environment to build Splash.
To finalize with the dependencies, you need to install a few ones:
pacman -Sy --needed zip git
pacman -Sy --needed mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{cmake,make,gcc,yasm,pkgconf,jsoncpp,glm,gsl,python3,portaudio,zlib,ffmpeg,zeromq,cppzmq,snappy,opencv,gphoto2}
Building Splash#
Once everything is installed, you can go on with building Splash. To build Splash and link it against the system libraries (this is the path to take on Windows):
git clone --recurse-submodules https://gitlab.com/splashmapper/splash
cd splash
mkdir -p build && cd build
# The BUILD_GENERIC_ARCH flag allows for building an executable which can run on any
# sufficiently modern (less than 15 years) CPU. It is usually safe to remove it but
# people had issues in the past with some arch-specific flags
cmake -DUSE_SYSTEM_LIBS=ON -DBUILD_GENERIC_ARCH=ON ..
ninja
Otherwise, to build and link it against the bundled libraries (note that this will not work on Windows):
git clone --recurse-submodules https://gitlab.com/splashmapper/splash
cd splash
./make_deps.sh
mkdir -p build && cd build
# The BUILD_GENERIC_ARCH flag allows for building an executable which can run on any
# sufficiently modern (less than 15 years) CPU. It is usually safe to remove it but
# people had issues in the past with some arch-specific flags
cmake -GNinja -DBUILD_GENERIC_ARCH=ON ..
ninja
You can now try launching Splash:
./src/splash --help
Installing and/or packaging#
Linux: installing from the sources#
Once Splash is compiled (see previous subsection), you can install it from the build directory:
sudo ninja install
# And then it can be run from anywhere
splash --help
Windows: generating a package ready to be installed and distributed#
On Windows, you can install it like on Linux using the install build target. But to do things more like they are done on Windows, it is suggested to generate an installation package and then install Splash like any other software. This way it will be available from the Start menu, among other advantages.
First, you need to install the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (or NSIS), after downloading it from their webpage. This is used by CPack to generate the package. Once installed, run from the build directory:
ninja package
An installation file named splash-$VERSION-win64.exe will be generated. Double-click on it from the explorer to run it and install Splash. Once done it can be found in the Start menu, or in C:Program Filessplashbin.
Uninstalling Splash (when built from sources)#
To uninstall Splash when built from sources, you need to do from the very same directory where Splash has been built:
cd ${PATH_TO_SPLASH}/build
sudo ninja uninstall
Advanced configuration#
Realtime scheduling#
If you want to have access to realtime scheduling within Splash, you need to create a group “realtime”, add yourself to it and set some limits:
sudo addgroup realtime
sudo adduser $USER realtime
sudo cp ./data/config/realtime.conf /etc/security/limits.d/
And if you want the logs to be written to /var/log/splash.log:
sudo adduser $USER syslog
Then log out and log back in.
Attributes default values#
If you want to specify some defaults values for the objects, you can set the environment variable SPLASH_DEFAULTS with the path to a file defining default values for given types. An example of such a file can be found in data/config/splashrc
To uninstall Splash when installed from the sources, do the following from the directory Splash was built in:
cd ${PATH_TO_SPLASH}/build
sudo make uninstall
Wayland support#
Support for the Wayland display server is partial, and follows the progress of the GLFW library which is used to give a cross-platform way to handle graphic contexts. An example of a current limitation is that if any Splash window is hidden, the whole rendering will be stalled on some Wayland compositors.
To activate it, the SPLASH_USE_WAYLAND environment variable must be defined, to whichever value. For example, Splash can be run like this:
`bash
SPLASH_USE_WAYLAND=1 splash
`