Windows and Mac OS extension

[fverdugo]

Some potential users are willing to use MiniQhull from Windows and presumably also from Mac OS, but the project is only tested for Linux. See this thread: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/delaunay-triangularization/36172/13

Is somebody in the Julia community ready to help us with the Windows and / or the mac OS extension? Feel free to fork and open a PR. Thanks!

[ueliwechsler]

I have no experience with Cmake and wrapping c-libraries in general, so I cannot offer direct help, but since I have a windows mache, I can try to figure out where the problem lies, i.e. where the build breaks.

On windows, I get the following build.log ( i have set a environmental variable to QHULL_ROOT_DIR = C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1` which is the home folder of ghull)

-- Building for: Visual Studio 14 2015
-- Selecting Windows SDK version  to target Windows 10.0.18362.
-- The C compiler identification is MSVC 19.0.24215.1
...
-- CMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG: /MDd /Zi /Ob0 /Od /RTC1
CMake Error: The following variables are used in this project, but they are set to NOTFOUND.
Please set them or make sure they are set and tested correctly in the CMake files:
QHULL_qhull_r_INCLUDE_DIR (ADVANCED)
   used as include directory in directory C:/Users/wueli/.julia/dev/MiniQhull/deps/MiniQhullWrapper
   ...
   used as include directory in directory C:/Users/wueli/.julia/dev/MiniQhull/deps/MiniQhullWrapper/src/tests
QHULL_qhull_r_LIBRARY (ADVANCED)
    linked by target "MiniQhullWrapper" in directory C:/Users/wueli/.julia/dev/MiniQhull/deps/MiniQhullWrapper/src/lib

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "C:/Users/wueli/.julia/dev/MiniQhull/deps/MiniQhullWrapper/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
[ Info: MiniQhullWrapper root directory at: 
...
┌ Info: QHULL configuration:
│ ==============================================
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_FOUND    = false
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_DIR  = 
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_NAME = 
└   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_PATH = 

So apparently, the QHULL_qhull_r_INCLUDE_DIR variable does not exist or is empty. Going further, I see that in the CMakeCache.txt this error results because the QHULL_ROOT_DIR variable is not set.

//Directory to search for Qhull
QHULL_ROOT_DIR:PATH=

//Path to a file.
QHULL_qhull_r_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH=QHULL_qhull_r_INCLUDE_DIR-NOTFOUND
...

I think this variable should be set in FindQhull.cmake where

set(QHULL_ROOT_DIR
    "${QHULL_ROOT_DIR}"
    CACHE PATH "Directory to search for Qhull")

I assume that the FindQhull.cmake file is called in this part of CMakeLists.txt

#################################################################
# FIND QHULL
#################################################################

FIND_PACKAGE(Qhull REQUIRED)
INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(${INCLUDE_PATH} ${QHULL_qhull_r_INCLUDE_DIR})

However, at this point, I don't know how to proceed and set QHULL_ROOT_DIR to the environmental variable. Maybe this is already of help.

[fverdugo]

Thanks @ueliwechsler for reporting.

It is strange that

//Directory to search for Qhull
QHULL_ROOT_DIR:PATH=

appears empty in your cache file even though you have set the corresponding environment variable. @victorsndvg any idea of what is going on?

[victorsndvg]

Dear @ueliwechsler ,

first of all, can you confirm that the environment variable is set within your Julia environment?

I mean,

julia> ENV["QHULL_ROOT_DIR"] == "C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1"

If true, please try to instantiate and build the MiniQhull project again;

pkg> intantiate
pkg> build

is it still failing after these steps?

[ueliwechsler]

So I tried it again on another windows computer, the result is still the same.

And the qhull installation is here:

[victorsndvg]

Dear @ueliwechsler ,

the content of C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1 (picture) is the sources code directory, NOT the installation directory.

Maybe your Qhull library has been installed at C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1\qhull-2019.1?

Please, fix the QHULL_ROOT_DIR variable (pointing to the right Qhull install directory) and try again.

Anyway, we have no tested it under Windows, not sure if it will work.

[ueliwechsler]

I am not sure if I understand correctly what you mean by installation directory.
The qhull exacutable are located in bin, so I also tried to set the path to bin and I get the same result. So I assume, it does not work for windows in the current configuration.
C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1\qhull-2019.1 is a copy of C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1 it should not matter.

[djlacombe]

I tried to build Qhull using Visual Studio C++ by opening the Qhull solution file for the 64 bit build (i.e. the .sln file) and received the following log file:

-- Building for: NMake Makefiles
-- The C compiler identification is unknown
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:5 (PROJECT):
  The CMAKE_C_COMPILER:

    cl

  is not a full path and was not found in the PATH.

  To use the NMake generator with Visual C++, cmake must be run from a shell
  that can use the compiler cl from the command line.  This environment is
  unable to invoke the cl compiler.  To fix this problem, run cmake from the
  Visual Studio Command Prompt (vcvarsall.bat).

  Tell CMake where to find the compiler by setting either the environment
  variable "CC" or the CMake cache entry CMAKE_C_COMPILER to the full path to
  the compiler, or to the compiler name if it is in the PATH.

-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "C:/Users/dolacomb.TTU-305138/.julia/packages/MiniQhull/unUAX/deps/MiniQhullWrapper/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
See also "C:/Users/dolacomb.TTU-305138/.julia/packages/MiniQhull/unUAX/deps/MiniQhullWrapper/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log".
[ Info: MiniQhullWrapper root directory at: C:\Users\dolacomb.TTU-305138\.julia\packages\MiniQhull\unUAX\deps\MiniQhullWrapper
┌ Warning: You should have entered a numeric value
└ @ Main C:\Users\dolacomb.TTU-305138\.julia\packages\MiniQhull\unUAX\deps\build.jl:46
┌ Warning: MiniQhullWrapper lib directory not found: 
└ @ Main C:\Users\dolacomb.TTU-305138\.julia\packages\MiniQhull\unUAX\deps\build.jl:60
┌ Warning: MiniQhullWrapper library not found: ["libMiniQhullWrapper.dll"]
└ @ Main C:\Users\dolacomb.TTU-305138\.julia\packages\MiniQhull\unUAX\deps\build.jl:68
┌ Info: QHULL configuration:
│ ==============================================
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_FOUND    = false
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_DIR  = 
│   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_NAME = 
└   - QHULL_WRAPPER_LIB_PATH = 

I'm not sure how to proceed but this may provide some additional info. If anyone can help me out, I can try to find a solution.

[victorsndvg]

Dear @djlacombe ,

I've never used Visual Studio and I don't know how it works. It seems that that found/selected C compiler is not working or at least cannot be used from Visual Studio.

Please, follow the recommendations :

To use the NMake generator with Visual C++, cmake must be run from a shell
that can use the compiler cl from the command line. This environment is
unable to invoke the cl compiler. To fix this problem, run cmake from the
Visual Studio Command Prompt (vcvarsall.bat).

Tell CMake where to find the compiler by setting either the environment
variable "CC" or the CMake cache entry CMAKE_C_COMPILER to the full path to
the compiler, or to the compiler name if it is in the PATH.

or choose another C compiler if possible.

[victorsndvg]

Dear @ueliwechsler ,

MiniQull (and in particular MiniQhullWrapper and findQhull.cmake file) does not look for the Qhull binary file. In particular they are looking for the following files:

• Relative path pointing to headers (only informative): libqhull_r/libqhull_r.h
• Relative path pointing to the library file with this name (without extension): qhull_r, libqhull_r, qhullstatic_r or libqhullstatic_r.

If you are under windows, I suppose library extensions can be .dll (for dynamic libraries) or .lib for static libraries.

Please, once you find these files, can you report their full path to try to recommend you a valid QHULL_ROOT_DIR?

[ueliwechsler]

@victorsndvg thanks for the the clarificication and sorry for the late reply.

The first file is at

• ...\qhull-2019.1\src\libqhull_r\libqhull_r.h
  From the library files, I could only find:
• ....\qhull-2019.1\bin\qhull_r.dll
  The other files: libqhull_r,qhullstatic_r and libqhullstatic_r are either a .pro, a c-source or a c header file and all located in ....\qhull-2019.1\src.

Note, I did download and used the version which is available here: http://www.qhull.org/download/qhull-2019.1.zip.

[victorsndvg]

Dear @ueliwechsler ,

only one question, did you install Qhull? I mean, did you run make install?

If you run it at the Qhull source directory root, it create the .\lib at the install directory? At least, this is how it works on linux.

If previous step does not change anything I have a last try to make it work.

Can you please replace the following line in your MiniQhull local repository?

https://github.com/gridap/MiniQhull.jl/blob/master/deps/build.jl#L26

and change this:

        configure  = run(`$cmake -B $QHULL_WRAPPER_BUILD -S $QHULL_WRAPPER_SOURCES`)

by:

        configure  = run(`$cmake -DQHULL_qhull_r_LIBRARY=FULL-PATH-TO-QHULL-LIBRARY -B $QHULL_WRAPPER_BUILD -S $QHULL_WRAPPER_SOURCES`)

where:
FULL-PATH-TO-QHULL-LIBRARY, in your particular case, is C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1\bin\qhull_r.dll, if I'm not wrong.

Hope it works!

[ueliwechsler]

Hi @victorsndvg , thank you for your effort and information, but it did not work.
I did not do the make install before because I assumed it is not needed. I tried to run make install and it failed with

C:\sw_source\qhull-2019.1>make install
==========================================
==== If ar fails, try make qhullx ====
==========================================
ar -rs lib/libqhullstatic.a src/libqhullstatic/global.o src/libqhullstatic/stat.o src/libqhullstatic/geom2.o src/libqhullstatic/poly2.o src/libqhullstatic/merge.o src/libqhullstatic/libqhull.o src/libqhullstatic/geom.o src/libqhullstatic/poly.o src/libqhullstatic/qset.o src/libqhullstatic/mem.o src/libqhullstatic/random.o src/libqhullstatic/usermem.o src/libqhullstatic/userprintf.o src/libqhullstatic/io.o src/libqhullstatic/user.o src/libqhullstatic/rboxlib.o src/libqhullstatic/userprintf_rbox.o
ar: lib/libqhullstatic.a: No such file or directory
make: *** [Makefile:680: lib/libqhullstatic.a] Error 1

Unfortunately, your other fix did also not help. I am afraid my knowledge is not good enough to really understand what exactly is going on.

[victorsndvg]

Sorry @ueliwechsler ,

we have not designed the package to be used on Windows yet.

As soon as we got it working on windows we will comment in this issue again.

Thanks for reporting!