Building FlightGear - Debian

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Revision as of 22:33, 4 February 2011 by Flughund (talk | contribs) (Reviewed for upcoming releases of FG 2.2.0 and Debian Squeeze)
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HowTo build on Debian

HowTo build FlightGear 2.2.0 or bleeding edge development version, hereinafter simply called GIT, on GNU/Linux Debian Stable 6.x (Squeeze) and Testing/Unstable (Wheezy).

Even on Debian Oldstable 5.x (Lenny) this guide will work for both, 2.2.0 and GIT. At least until one or more dependencies of the GIT version are changing or beening added.

If you don't want to make your hands dirty, have a look at Scripted_Compilation_on_Linux_Debian/Ubuntu.


Requirements and Preparations

You need an OpenGL capable graphics including a proper installed driver.

Also a bunch of packages (and some of their dependencies) are required:

  • gcc, g++, make, automake1.9, pkg-config
  • mawk (or gawk)
  • cmake (min. version 2.6.0-5, for Etch available on backports.debian.org!)
  • git, subversion, wget
  • freeglut3-dev, libgl1-mesa-dev, libxrandr-dev
  • libxi-dev, libxmu-dev, libxext-dev
  • libopenal-dev (for Lenny see libopenal), libalut-dev
  • libjpeg62-dev, libtiff4-dev, libpng12-dev
  • libboost1.37-dev (min 1.37, 1.40 available for Lenny on backports.debian.org)

During installation packages simgear-dev and openscenegraph-dev *must not* be installed. They can safely be re-installed after compilation.


Build and install

Because we are going to install versions different to the ones in the repositries it is recommended to install FG-2.2.0 and/or GIT in a place independent to the base system such as /usr/local/FG-2.2.0, /opt/FG-2.2.0 or in a subdirectory of your $HOME. I suggest to make it writeable by the user that there is no need to become root for the make install commands. I'll use $prefix as a placeholder for this directory.
Another one will be $srcdir, it stands for the absolute path to the directory which contains the folders of the various source codes. So in the following instructions you have to replace these with the local paths or even export them during the process.

Follow the instructions to fetch the sources and the data needed by FlightGear and the commands to build/install each source.

Have in mind that the data is a relatively large download (GIT about 3.5 GB and 2.2.0 300 MB). So, to save some time, it is a good idea to fetch it while building the sources.

For some basic info on git commands for FlightGear users we have a git for dummies section.


libopenal

Lenny only! The libopenal-dev package in Lenny is too old for fgcom. For FlightGear it does work but not all features (like doppler) are available, so installing an up to date version is recommended anyway.

cd $srcdir
wget http://kcat.strangesoft.net/openal-releases/openal-soft-1.11.753.tar.bz2
tar xjf openal-soft-1.11.753.tar.bz2
cd openal-soft-1.11.753/build
cmake  -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" ..
make install


plib

Latest SVN is recommended, yet package plib1.8.5-dev for Squeeze does work as well.

cd $srcdir
svn co https://plib.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/plib/trunk plib
cd plib
sed s/PLIB_TINY_VERSION\ \ 5/PLIB_TINY_VERSION\ \ 6/ -i src/util/ul.h
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix
make install


OpenSceneGraph

2.2.0 only:

cd $srcdir
svn co -r 12072 http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph/trunk OpenSceneGraph

GIT only: Mostly the latest revision from OpenSceneGraph svn does suit. However, sometimes this does not work and as a fallback one can go backwards through the revisions.
At the moment (February 2011) this is the case. Highest reported working revision is 12072, checkout the source as shown above at 2.2.0 only.

cd $srcdir
svn co http://www.openscenegraph.org/svn/osg/OpenSceneGraph/trunk OpenSceneGraph

2.2.0 and GIT:

mkdir osg-build && cd osg-build
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" -D CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O3" -D CMAKE_C_FLAGS="-O3" \
   -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH="$prefix" $srcdir/OpenSceneGraph
make install


Note

From this point forward when providing the "LDFLAGS" string, you should use the path specific to your installation. For 32-bit installations this will probably be the path ending in /lib. In a 64-bit installation, this may be the path ending in /lib64, but doesn't have to be. You must verify this for your build, because you do not have to include both paths in the following compilations.


SimGear

2.2.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
git clone git://gitorious.org/fg/simgear.git simgear
cd simgear

2.2.0 only:

git checkout -b releases/2.2.0 origin/releases/2.2.0

2.2.0 and GIT:

.autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix CPPFLAGS=-I$prefix/include LDFLAGS="-L$prefix/lib -L$prefix/lib64"
make install


FlightGear source

2.2.0 and GIT:

cd $srcdir
git clone git://gitorious.org/fg/flightgear.git flightgear
cd flightgear

2.2.0 only:

git checkout -b releases/2.2.0 origin/releases/2.2.0

2.2.0 and GIT:

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix CPPFLAGS=-I$prefix/include/ LDFLAGS="-L$prefix/lib -L$prefix/lib64"
make install


FlightGear data

2.2.0 only: At the time of writing, 2.2.0 is not yet released, there is no tar archive for the data available. Test pilots for this release are advised to use the release/2.2.0 branch from git. The following URL for wget will be updated, if it is not working, as soon as 2.2.0 is released.

cd $prefix
wget http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/flightgear/ftp/Shared/FlightGear-data-2.2.0.tar.bz2
tar xjf FlightGear-data-2.2.0.tar.bz2

GIT only: For slow/unstable internet connections it is recommended to download the fgdata.bundle instead of cloning the data.
FlightGear's primary git server on gitorious is known to have trouble cloning the data, the mapserver's mirror usually has no problems:

cd $prefix
git clone git://mapserver.flightgear.org/fgdata


Trial run

When all the builds are done and the data download has finished it is time for a test run:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$prefix/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
$prefix/bin/fgfs --fg-root=$prefix/fgdata

For the future, if you want to start FlightGear from command line have a look at fgfsrc, if you prefer a graphical user interface continue with compiling fgrun. Have in mind that fgfs need to find our self compiled libraries and therefore we have to tell the linker (ld) where to find them. That is what the first line here does.


Optional Software

fgrun

To build fgrun two more package is required:

  • libfltk1.1-dev
cd $srcdir
svn co http://fgrun.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fgrun/trunk fgrun
cd fgrun/fgrun/
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=$prefix  [CPPFLAGS=-I$prefix/include/ LDFLAGS="-L$prefix/lib -L$prefix/lib64"]
make install


fgcom

For fgcom unfortunately there is one more dependency which cannot be solved with packages on Lenny, see libopenal.

cd $srcdir
svn co https://appfgcom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fgcom/trunk fgcom
cd fgcom/src
make INSTALL_BIN=$prefix/bin INSTALL_DIR=$prefix/fgcom \
   PLIB_PREFIX=$prefix OPENAL_PREFIX=$prefix install