Building the program and the library
JSBSim can either be built with CMake or Microsoft Visual Studio. If you are using a Mac OSX or a Linux platform, you must use CMake. If you are a Windows user you can use either one.
JSBSim is coded in standard C++98/C99 and has no dependencies, so all you need is a C/C++ compiler installed on your platform.
Building with CMake
CMake is a multiplatform tool to build and test software. It can produce files to build JSBSim with GNU make or Microsoft Visual Studio. To keep the build files separated from the source code, it is preferable to build JSBSim in a separate directory.
> cd jsbsim-code
> mkdir build
> cd build
First, you should invoke CMake and then execute make
> cmake ..
> make
This will compile the various classes, and build the JSBSim application which will be located in build/src
Options passed to CMake
CMake can use a number of parameters to tune the build of JSBSim. Different options are presented below. You can use them independently or any combination thereof depending on your needs.
Passing parameters to the compiler
If you want to set compiler options, you can pass flags to CMake to build a Debug version of JSBSim. JSBSim also uses C for some code, you can set options for both the C++ and the C compiler.
> cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_DEBUG="-g -Wall" -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS_DEBUG="-g -Wall" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
> make
> cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE="-O3 -march=native -mtune=native" -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE="-O3 -march=native -mtune=native" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
> make -j4
Building Expat or using the system library
JSBSim uses the Expat library to read XML files. The Expat source code is provided with JSBSim source code and is compiled along with JSBSim during its build. However, if Expat is already installed on your platform you might prefer to use your system Expat library in order to avoid duplication. In that case, you should pass the SYSTEM_EXPAT flag to CMake:
> cmake -DSYSTEM_EXPAT=ON ..
> make
Building the Python module of JSBSim
A Python module of JSBSim can also be built by CMake. For that, you need Cython installed on your platform. CMake will automatically detect Cython and build the Python module.
Building with Microsoft Visual Studio
From Visual Studio, you can open the project file JSBSim.vcxproj to open a project for JSBSim. The project file will setup Visual Studio for building JSBSim executable.
Note 1: JSBSim official build tool is CMake. Visual studio project files are provided as a convenience and are not guaranteed to be up to date with the code.
Note 2: Since Visual Studio 2017, Microsoft has included CMake so you should be able to build JSBSim on VS2017 directly from the CMake file.
Testing JSBSim
JSBSim comes with a test suite to automatically check that the build is correct. This test suite is located in the tests directory and is coded in Python so you need the Python module for JSBSim to be built.
The test suite can be run using ctest in the build directory. Tests can be run in parallel on several cores (4 in the example below) using the option -j
> ctest -j4
Installing JSBSim
Once JSBSim is built and tested, you can install the C++ headers and library platform wide. For that, you can invoke GNU make from the build directory
> make install
Installing the Python module
If you plan to install the Python module of JSBSim in addition to the C++ headers and library, then you must pass the flag INSTALL_PYTHON_MODULE to CMake
> cmake -DINSTALL_PYTHON_MODULE=ON ..
> make
> make install
Alternatively, the Python module can be installed manually by invoking the following commands from the build directory
> cd tests
> python setup.py install
