Programming Reference:Build System (obsolete)

This documentation only applies to BCI2000 Ver 3.0

Introduction

Previous versions of BCI2000 (2.x and earlier) were dependent on the visual components library (VCL) by Borland, and hence could only be built using the Borland compiler. For version 3.0, we made BCI2000 compiler-independent, and therefore had to choose a portable replacement for VCL. Qt was chosen to replace VCL because it is not only compiler-independent, but also platform-independent, a future goal for BCI2000.

As such, Qt is required for compiling the BCI2000 source on a non-Borland platform. If Borland is still being used as the compiling environment, VCL is still temporarily supported and the project will be built using the VCL for its graphical elements. For Visual Studio or MinGW builds of BCI2000, a stripped-down version of the Qt SDK is provided in the BCI2000 source tree.

To support such a large number of platforms and compilers, BCI2000 has turned to CMake http://www.cmake.org to generate Makefiles, project files, and Visual Studio solutions. CMake can be thought of as a meta-makefile, in that it examines your build environment, and sets up a Visual Studio project, a Code::Blocks project or a Makefile which is custom tailored to your environment. Due to the wide variation in possible build environments, BCI2000 can not come with a fixed Visual Studio solution file, or a fixed Eclipse project file (such fixed solutions would always end up costing users a lot of effort to set up the compiler to work correctly). Once remaining dependencies on the Win32 API are removed, the number of platforms BCI2000 supports will only be limited by the number of platforms and compilers for which CMake has generators.

Supported Environments

• Supported Operating Systems
  • Windows XP, Windows 2000 (Vista and Windows 7 have poor Audio Video latencies - not recommended for BCI2000)
  • 64-bit Windows systems--please read this information
  • Macintosh OSX support coming soon
  • Linux support coming soon
• Supported Compilers
  • Borland 6, 2007, 2009, 2010
  • Visual Studio 9 (2008), download free Express version from here (although some BCI2000 modules require MFC, most modules may be built using the Express version)
  • MinGW with gcc 4.x
• Supported IDEs
  • Borland 6, 2007, 2009, 2010 (Note: Use the project files in the src directory for Borland IDE support. This support is being phased out)
  • Visual Studio 9 (2008) (via CMake)
  • Code::Blocks - MinGW Makefiles (via CMake)
  • Other IDEs supported by CMake generators (Eclipse CDT, ...), as long as these use the compilers listed above

How To Build Using CMake

1. Ensure that your compiler and IDE are installed on the computer. This means that Visual Studio is installed if you intend to use Visual Studio, or that MinGW and Code::Blocks are installed if you intend to use Code::Blocks as your IDE and MinGW as your compiler.
2. Download and install cmake (Version 2.8 or higher!) from http://www.cmake.org/ - Add to path for all users. -- If you experience a problem with a version of cmake newer than 2.8.1, download cmake 2.8.1 from here.
3. Go to the BCI2000/build directory and double-click the "Make ... .bat" file which best describes your intended platform. (for example, if you plan to use Visual Studio 2008, you would run the "Make VS2008 Project Files.bat"). These batch files will ask you a few questions about which parts of the BCI2000 distribution you want to make, and will then call CMake with the appropriate options.
4. Wait while cmake examines your computer, finds qt and your compiler, and generates applicable project files for your system
5. Open the generated project/solution (for Visual Studio, this is called "ALL_BUILD.vcproj") in the IDE of your choice. Or, if you are using MinGW make, run the make command from the command prompt using the Makefile in the top-level "build" directory. Refer to your IDE's help for IDE-specific instructions on how to build an application.
6. Even though CMake must always be run from one top-level place (the "build" directory), and will spend several seconds generating a Makefile or project file for the whole BCI2000 tree at once, this does not mean that you have to compile all of BCI2000 at once. In the next step, if you're using MinGW-make on the command-line, you could for example type "make Operator" or "make SignalGenerator" to build only selected modules (again, you should be in the top-level "build" directory when you do this). Visual IDEs usually have their own equivalent of this: for example, in Visual Studio 2008, you can right-click on a particular module and select "Build".
7. If you build the targets"NewBCI2000Module" and "NewBCI2000Filter", this will create two new binary executables with these names. They will be found in the top-level "build" directory (and, in common with CMake and make, they should be launched only from this location). Launch NewBCI2000Module to create a new project in order to compile your own custom module. Launch NewBCI2000Filter to create a new filter and add it to a project you have already created.

Building against a Qt distribution outside the BCI2000 source tree

BCI2000 may be built against a standard Qt distribution. Depending on your compiler and desired configuration (e.g., when using Visual Studio), you might need to re-build that distribution from source before building BCI2000.

To enable the BCI2000 build system to use the external Qt distribution, open the file BCI2000/build/cmake/FindQt.cmake in a text editor. There, in line 10, replace

SET( USE_STD_QT FALSE )

with

SET( USE_STD_QT TRUE )

Then, go to the directory BCI2000/build and remove the file CMakeCache.txt before re-creating project files using the appropriate batch file in BCI2000/build.

How To Test

It is important - especially if you're using an unsupported compiler/IDE - to test your executables once they've been built to make sure they function properly.

To run testing:

1. Ensure that the entire BCI2000 project has built successfully and that executables exist in the BCI2000/prog directory, the BCI2000/tools/cmdline directory, and the BCI2000/build/buildutils/test directory.
2. Run test_executables.bat in the BCI2000/build/buildutils/test directory.

The tests will run and report a message after they've finished whether they've failed or not. You may see a message in the beginning of the test stating that a directory does not exist. This is normal behavior and does not reflect whether or not your executables have failed testing or not.

A Note on found differences: depending on how many differences found it may not indicate that you have a broken build. Sometimes different compilers handle the precision of floating point numbers differently than others. These can account for small differences in calculated signal or state values. The default ref files were generated using Borland 2007. If your compiler is different, this may not be a problem.

Known Issues

• MinGW, Borland and other single configuration generators within CMake only generate one configuration at CMake Run-time. By default, this is set to the release configuration. It can be set - along with specific compiler options - in BCI2000/build/cmake/BuildConfigurations.cmake. The Visual Studio generator will ignore settings in this file.

• All Compilers handle non standard characters, such as umlauts and characters with accents or tildes, differently. Because BCI2000 currently has no standardized way of handling non standard characters in a cross-compiler environment, it is strongly recommended that - for the time being - special characters are not used in localizations during the development of BCI2000 Ver 3.0.

Conclusions

Now that BCI2000 is open to other compilers - and soon - other platforms, support may not exist for every possible compiler/platform available. Certain compilers do not optimize code as well as others, and this behavior may lead to poor system latencies during BCI2000 experiments. The supported compilers have been rigorously tested and confirmed to be adequate for compiling the BCI2000 sources. If you wish to use a different compiler, be sure to run tools/BCI2000Certification in order to confirm your setup. CMake is a powerful tool, but in the end, ability to compile the sources is completely up to the IDE/compiler choice. If your IDE/compiler choice is not listed above, it is strongly urged that you to consider using one which is supported. If you run into problems using an unsupported IDE/compiler combination, you can try to find help at the BBS - http://www.bci2000.org/phpbb/index.php. BCI2000 should compile as effortlessly as possible on supported platforms.

Platforms tested successfully so far

Compiler	OS	Processors	Qt linkage
MSVC2008	Win XP SP3	2	static
MSVC2008	Win XP SP3	1	static
MSVC2008	Win 7 64bit	1	dynamic
MinGW > 4	Win XP SP3	1	static
MinGW > 4	Win XP SP3	1	dynamic
C++ Builder 2010*	Win XP SP3	2	n/a

*In version 3, the Operator module cannot be built with Borland C++ Builder (BCB). For the test, an MSVC-compiled Operator module was used in conjunction with BCB-compiled core modules.

See also

Programming Reference:Building Qt for BCI2000