NifSkope/Compile

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To compile NifSkope, you need to do the following:

  1. get the NifSkope source code and Qt,
  2. set up the build environment,
  3. if necessary, compile Qt, and finally
  4. compile NifSkope.

Following are the details.

Contents

Windows

Get The NifSkope Source Code

  • First, download and install TortoiseSVN.
  • Then, open your My Documents folder, create a directory niftools in that folder (right click -> new -> folder).
  • Right click on the newly created niftools folder, and select "SVN Checkout" in the context menu.
  • In the URL field, put https://niftools.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/niftools/trunk.
  • Click Ok. The source code will start downloading.

The NifSkope source code should now reside in 

C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\niftools\nifskope

for Windows XP, and in 

C:\Users\username\Documents\niftools\nifskope

for Windows Vista, where username is your Windows user name. For more information on subversion, see Using SVN.

You now have two choices for compiling NifSkope: either with MinGW, or with MSVC. The MinGW build environment is very easy to set up, does not require that much disk space (about 303 megabytes), runs on most Windows platforms (confirmed on Windows 98 and up), but compilation is a bit slower and the binary depends on the MinGW and Qt DLL files. The MSVC build environment takes more time to set up, requires more disk space (about 1526 megabytes) and more to download, and only runs on recent windows platforms (Windows 2000 and up), but once done, compilation is faster and the binary has no MinGW or Qt DLL dependencies.

MinGW Build

Getting Qt and MinGW

Go to Qt for Open Source C++ and download the qt-win-opensource-x.x.x-mingw.exe file; at the time of writing, x.x.x is 4.5.3. Run the installer and use the default install path C:\Qt\4.5.3\. During the installation, you are asked whether you want to download and install MinGW: do so, again, using the default install path C:\MinGW\. If you have previously installed MinGW, Qt will complain about needing version 3.2 of the w32api package; you can safely ignore this message if you have a newer version (current as of December 2008 is 3.12).

The above instructions are for downloading the Qt framework only, which is sufficient for compiling nifskope. Alternatively, you may want to use the Qt SDK for Open Source C++, which includes a complete development environment, besides the standard Qt framework.

Setting Up The Build Environment

Next, it is useful to create a batch file that sets up all environment variables for you. For example, on Windows XP: 

@echo off

echo "Setting Qt and MinGW Environment"
call C:\Qt\4.5.3\bin\qtvars.bat

cd "\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents"

On Windows Vista the last line should read: 

cd "\Users\username\Documents"

Copy and paste this in your editor. It will probably not work on your system; adapt the paths to reflect your install environment. In particular, replace username with your Windows user name. Save as buildenv.bat and put it on your My Documents folder. Right click and "Send to Desktop". This will create a shortcut on your Desktop. Right-click on this shortcut just created, select properties, and change the target into 

%comspec% /k  "C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\buildenv.bat"

for Windows XP, and 

%comspec% /k  "C:\Users\username\Documents\buildenv.bat"

for Windows Vista, where username is your Windows user name.

Run the buildenv.bat link you just created on your Desktop. This will open up your development console. If you type 

set

then you get a list of all environment variables. The variables INCLUDE, LIB, and PATH should reflect the proper locations of the MinGW and QT include, lib, and bin directories. If not then you may have a typo in your buildenv.bat file, in which case you need to fix the typo and run the link again.

Compiling NifSkope

Once ensured that the environment variables INCLUDE, LIB, and PATH are correctly set, cd to your NifSkope checkout, and run qmake and make: 

cd "\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\niftools\nifskope"
makeconfig.bat
qmake
make

or on Windows Vista: 

cd "\Users\username\Documents\niftools\nifskope"
makeconfig.bat
qmake
make

Your NifSkope.exe will now reside in the release directory.

Copying the DLL files

NifSkope.exe depends on some Qt DLL files. If you want to run NifSkope from the release directory, you need to copy those files to that directory. The files are 

mingwm10.dll
QtCore4.dll
QtGui4.dll
QtNetwork4.dll
QtOpenGL4.dll
QtXml4.dll

and can all be found in C:\Qt\4.5.3\bin\.

Optional: Creating The Installer

The official installer is created in the following way. First, make sure you have installed

Browse to the niftools\nifskope\win-install directory, and run makeexe.bat. You may have to press return a few times in the console window that pops up. At the end, you have an installer for your nifskope!

MSVC Build

EDITORIAL NOTE: the MSVC build has not yet been tested with Qt 4.5.0 or higher

Getting the Qt Source Code

Go to Trolltech's Qt4 The download links are on the bottom of page, you need the qt-win-opensource-src-x.x.x zip file; at the time of writing, x.x.x is 4.4.0. Extract the zip to a "nice" folder, this is where you Qt library will reside. You cannot just move a Qt folder after you built the library without breaking things. The folder name should not contain any spaces. A choice could be C:\Qt\ For example, move your Qt source zip to C:\Qt, and extract the zip there. The sources end up in the folder C:\Qt\qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.0

Setting Up The Build Environment

Download and install Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2008. Next, it is useful to create a batch file that sets up all environment variables for you. For example, on 32-bit versions of Windows: 

@echo off

echo "Setting Visual Studio Environment"
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86

echo "Setting Qt Environment"
set QTPREFIX=C:\Qt\qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.0
set INCLUDE=%QTPREFIX%\include;%INCLUDE%
set LIB=%QTPREFIX%\lib;%LIB%
set PATH=%QTPREFIX%\bin;%PATH%

cd "\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents"

and on 64-bit versions of Windows: 

@echo off

echo "Setting Visual Studio Environment"
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86

echo "Setting Qt Environment"
set QTPREFIX=C:\Qt\qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.0
set INCLUDE=%QTPREFIX%\include;%INCLUDE%
set LIB=%QTPREFIX%\lib;%LIB%
set PATH=%QTPREFIX%\bin;%PATH%

cd "\Users\username\Documents"

Copy and paste this in your editor. It will probably not work on your system; adapt the paths to reflect your install environment. Save as buildenv.bat and put it on your My Documents folder. Right click and "Send to Desktop". This will create a shortcut on your Desktop. Right-click on this shortcut just created, select properties, and change the target into 

%comspec% /k  "C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\buildenv.bat"

for Windows XP, and 

%comspec% /k  "C:\Users\username\Documents\buildenv.bat"

for Windows Vista, where username is your Windows user name.

Compiling Qt

Run the buildenv.bat link you just created on your Desktop. This will open up your development console. If you type 

set

then you get a list of all environment variables. The variables INCLUDE, LIB, and PATH should reflect the proper locations of the MSVC and QT include, lib, and bin directories. If not then you may have a typo in your buildenv.bat file, in which case you need to fix the typo and run the link again.

Once ensured that the environment variables INCLUDE, LIB, and PATH are correctly set, type 

cd \Qt\qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.0

You should now be in the Qt library folder. To start the compilation process, type 

configure.exe -static -release -platform win32-msvc2008

This means we are configuring Qt to use MSVC and to link statically. Carefully read the instructions on screen, select "Yes" when asked. A tool called "qmake" will be compiled. Finally, a message will prompt you to start the building process by typing 

nmake

Qt should now compile. This will take some time.

Compiling NifSkope

There are two ways to build NifSkope with Qt. Pick your favorite.

Via QMake + NMake

Still in the console, cd to your NifSkope checkout, and run qmake and nmake: 

cd "\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\niftools\nifskope"
qmake
nmake

or on Windows Vista: 

cd "\Users\username\Documents\niftools\nifskope"
qmake
nmake

Your NifSkope.exe will now reside in the release directory.

Via QMake + MSVC Project

Still in the console, cd to your NifSkope checkout, and run qmake to create a project file: 

cd "\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\niftools\nifskope"	 
qmake -t vcapp

or on Windows Vista: 

cd "\Users\username\Documents\niftools\nifskope"	 
qmake -t vcapp

This will create a file called NifSkope.vcproj in your nifskope folder. Open that with MSVC.

Go to the "Build" menu and select "Build Solution". The first time you do this you will be asked to save the solution file. Just save it in the nifskope directory as well. NifSkope should now build! At the end of the process, your NifSkope.exe should be in the release directory.

Linux

Building NifSkope on linux is fairly straightforward as most distributions come with Qt 4.

Getting Qt and Subversion

First grab qt and subversion from your distribution's repository if you do not already have it. Below are the commands for doing so on Fedora.

Fedora 8

su
yum install qt4 qt4-devel qt4-x11 subversion gcc-c++ make
exit

Fedora 9 & 10 & 11 & 12

su
yum install qt qt-devel qt-x11 subversion gcc-c++ make
exit

Get The NifSkope Source Code

Now you have Qt and subversion, grab the NifSkope source code: 

cd
svn co https://niftools.svn.sf.net/svnroot/niftools/trunk niftools

Compiling NifSkope

Finally, run qmake and make: 

cd niftools/nifskope
./makeconfig.sh
qmake-qt4
make

Note that if you have multiple cores, you can type make -j N where N is the number of cores you have. The compilation will run N times faster. Finally, type 

./NifSkope

and you can start enjoying NifSkope on your linux box!

Optional: Creating An RPM Package

On Fedora, you can create an RPM for nifskope as follows. First, you need to set up your rpm environment: 

su
yum install rpmdevtools
exit
rpmdev-setuptree

Next, build your source tarball: 

cd linux-install
./maketarball.sh

This will automatically dump the source code tarball into ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/nifskope-x.x.x.tar.bz2. Finally, build the rpm: 

rpmbuild -ba nifskope.spec

The rpm will now reside somewhere in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/.

You can also build nifskope in mock, which allows you to build rpms for different target distributions and different architectures on the same host. For example: 

rpmbuild -bs nifskope.spec
mock -r fedora-10-x86_64 ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/nifskope-x.x.x-1.fc10.src.rpm
mock -r fedora-10-i386 ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/nifskope-x.x.x-1.fc10.src.rpm

The rpms will reside in /var/lib/mock/xxx/result.

Mac OS X

Getting Qt

You can use MacPorts http://www.macports.org/ to install qt (there are other ways, such as fink). Once you have installed MacPorts, simply do: 

port search qt
sudo port install qt4-mac

This will install Qt. It may take a while, depending on how many dependent libraries it has to download and compile as well. If you run into a perl error, fix it by following the advice here: http://trac.macports.org/wiki/ProblemHotlist#perl5-image-error

Compiling NifSkope

Then the install is very similar to Linux. 

cd
svn co https://niftools.svn.sf.net/svnroot/niftools/trunk niftools
cd niftools/nifskope
./makeconfig.sh

You may have an error the first time you run ./makeconfig.sh. Just run it again. 

qmake
make

Now Nifskope.app resides in niftools/nifskope.

Copying the XML files

Before you can run nifskope, one final step is needed: copy nif.xml and kfm.xml from niftools/docsys/ to niftools/nifskope/NifSkope.app/Contents/MacOS/ from the command line (or you can control-click on Nifskope.app/ to open up the Application bundle and navigate to Contents/MacOS in the Finder). Now your nifskope should work!

Retrieved from "http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/NifSkope/Compile"
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