Building with CMake

We use CMake to configure the IMP build when building from source.

There are two different ways to configure with cmake; one is to run cmake in a fresh directory passing some options on the command line, and the other is to run ccmake and use its editor to change options. For both, assume you are in a directory called debug and the IMP source is in a directory at ../imp. We are using the default of makefiles for the actual building.

Configuring with cmake command line options

To configure and build as simply as possible do

cmake ../imp
make -j8

To make a debug build of IMP with the cgal and membrane modules disabled and core compiled in per-cpp mode, and to use Ninja instead of make as your build command do:

cmake ../imp -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -G Ninja -DIMP_DISABLED_MODULES=cgal:membrane -DIMP_PER_CPP_COMPILATION=core
ninja -j8

Configuring using ccmake

Run ccmake ../imp You can then look through the various options available.
If you want a debug build, set CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to Debug
Tell cmake to configure (hit c) and generate (hit g)
make -j8

You can run ccmake after running cmake as above if you want, too. Running it never hurts.

Further configuration options

You can use Ninja instead if it is available by passing -G Ninja to the (c)cmake call. That is highly recommended when it is available.

Various aspects of IMP build behavior can be controlled via variables. These can be set interactively using ccmake (eg ccmake ../imp) or by passing them with -D in a call to cmake. Key ones include:

IMP_DISABLED_MODULES: A colon-separated list of disabled modules.
IMP_MAX_CHECKS: One of NONE, USAGE, INTERNAL to control what check levels will be supported.
IMP_MAX_LOG: One of SILENT, PROGRESS, TERSE, VERBOSE to control what log levels are supported.
IMP_PER_CPP_COMPILATION: A colon-separated list of modules to build one .cpp at a time.
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE: one of Debug or Release.

There also are a variety of standard cmake options which control the build. For example:

CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH and CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH control the paths CMake searches in to locate IMP prerequisite libraries. If your libraries are installed in non-standard locations, you can set these variables to help CMake find them. For example, on a 32-bit RHEL5 system, which has both Boost and HDF5 in non-standard locations, we use
```
  -DCMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH="/usr/include/boost141;/usr/include/hdf518/" -DCMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/lib/boost141;/usr/lib/hdf518"
```
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX should be set if you want to install IMP in a non-standard location.

Workarounds for common CMake issues

Python binary/header mismatch

In order to build IMP Python extensions, CMake needs to find the Python header and library files that match the python binary. If you have multiple versions of Python installed (for example on a Mac with Homebrew), it might find headers for one version and the binary for another. This can be worked around by explicitly telling CMake where your Python library and headers are by setting the PYTHON_LIBRARY and PYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR CMake variables.

For example, on a Mac with Homebrew, where python is Homebrew's /usr/local/bin/python, CMake will often find Apple's Python headers. This can be resolved by telling CMake where the Homebrew Python headers and library are, by addinng to your CMake invocation something like -DPYTHON_LIBRARY=/usr/local/opt/python@2/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/lib/libpython2.7.dylib -DPYTHON_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/local/opt/python@2/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/Headers

CMake reports that it found a dependency but then reports failed

For each dependency CMake will first try to find the header and library files for that dependency, reporting success if it finds them. Next, it will often try to build a small C or C++ test program that uses those headers and libraries. If this fails the dependency cannot be used (and CMake will, somewhat confusing, report that the dependency was first found and then not found). To fix issues like this, check the CMake error log in CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log to see what failed. In some cases this can be fixed by modifying the flags passed to the C or C++ compiler. For example, recent versions of Protobuf fail on some systems because they require C++11 support, and this can be fixed by adding to your CMake invocation -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-std=c++11"

Wrong version of helper binaries found

Note also that CMake searches in the system path (PATH environment variable) for command line tools such as python and swig. Thus, if you have multiple versions of tools (e.g. /usr/bin/swig and /usr/local/bin/swig) make sure the PATH variable is set correctly so that the right tool is found before you run CMake. You may need to make symlinks or copies to help it out if your binaries are named oddly; for example on a RHEL5 system we need to force CMake to use /usr/bin/python2.6 rather than /usr/bin/python (which is Python 2.4, which is too old to work with IMP) by doing something like:

mkdir bin
ln -sf /usr/bin/python26 bin/python
PATH=`pwd`/bin:$PATH

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