There are several methods to install the prerequisites on Windows 10 or 11. I chose to install miniconda, which is a very complete and large Python-based tools environment. There is a package system under miniconda, to select the products you need. It has all our prerequisites.
From miniconda prompt:
conda activate
conda update -y -n base -c defaults conda
conda create -y --name CloudComPy310 python=3.10
# --- erase previous env with the same name if existing
conda activate CloudComPy310
conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority flexible
conda install -y boost cgal cmake draco "ffmpeg=6.1" gdal jupyterlab laszip matplotlib "mysql=8" notebook numpy opencv openmp "openssl=3.1" pcl pdal psutil pybind11 quaternion "qhull=2020.2" "qt=5.15.8" scipy sphinx_rtd_theme spyder tbb tbb-devel "xerces-c=3.2"
For information, the list of packages actually installed for building and testing can be found in conda-list_Windows11_310.
CMake from miniconda is used to get ctest at install, not for build.
To use FBX format plugin, install the FBX SDK, not provided by an miniconda package.
It is necessary to configure Visual Studio 2019 with CMake.
I don't master well the configuration and use of Visual Studio, so I tested two ways to use the Visual Studio GUI, without knowing if there is a better way to take into account the prerequisites in the Visual Studio environment.
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1: Launch the Visual Studio GUI as is, without any additions, and give all the necessary paths for the prerequisites.
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2: Launch the Visual Studio GUI from the
miniconda Prompt (miniconda3)console with the command:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe".
With the miniconda environment, many paths and variables are found automatically. In both cases, it is necessary to provide some configuration variables to CMake. With Visual Studio, these variables can be filled in a json file, which is read during the configuration step. I suppose it is also possible to install cmake-gui to do the same.
The following plugins require to install specific libraries, not packaged. You can deactivate these plugins in the json file if you don't want to rebuild the libraries...
PLUGIN_STANDARD_QCORK see Cork for boolean operation
PLUGIN_STANDARD_QMESH_BOOLEAN
PLUGIN_IO_QFBX for Autodesk format, see file I/O and above
PLUGIN_IO_QSTEP for step format (OpenCascade libraries)
My CMakeSettings.json file used to build CloudComPy is in the source package.
After the installation step, it is in any case necessary to load the miniconda environment (miniconda Prompt console) for Python and Numpy to be correctly configured.
The tests are installed in <install-dir>/doc/PythonAPI_test, with shell scripts to set the PYTHONPATH and launch one test.
When in <install-dir>/doc/PythonAPI_test, ctest launches all the tests.
The CloudCompare GUI is installed in <install-dir>/bin/CloudCompare, and works as usual.