Developer's manual (Windows) - AhmedKEpfl/qml-chilitags GitHub Wiki

  • Install Visual Studio 2015 (this has been done with 2015 version, I don't know whether it is different for older versions). I did the download from dreamspark.epfl.ch. This is possible because I am an epfl student.
  • Try to install Open CV and build programs with it in Visual Studio. I followed this video tutorial for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrIpAztWv1Q&feature=iv&src_vid=ScAPinibluA&annotation_id=annotation_4234877967. I wasn't able to run programs with this procedure because it seems my computer is missing some "DLL" files, namely 'MSVCP120D.dll'.
  • Download and install cmake: https://cmake.org/download/ . This program will be a cmake GUI application for running cmake on a project.
  • Clone the chilitags project on your windows PC: https://github.com/chili-epfl/chilitags , create a build/ folder there
  • Run Cmake: https://cmake.org/runningcmake/ , to generate the makefile and configuration files. We have to create a build folder inside chilitags (the same way as on the Linux version). And then, in the cmake GUI, choose the chilitags folder as the source and chilitags\build (or chilitags\build-desktop or whichever name you chose) as the build folder. We will generate a Makefile for Visual Studio. If we try to run cmake just like that, it won't work and cmake will complain and ask what are the values for the variables OpenCV_dir and OpenCV_Found. So we have to choose opencv/build/x86/vc12/lib for OpenCV_dir and True for OpenCV_Found. Now if we try to run cmake it will work and it will create the solution file for the chilitags project inside the build folder.
  • Open the makefile project in VisualStudio, and build the chilitags project (for linking to open cv, you have to follow the same steps as on the video above - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrIpAztWv1Q&feature=iv&src_vid=ScAPinibluA&annotation_id=annotation_4234877967). This will generate a chilitags.dll file in chilitags\build\src\Debug. It will also generate a chilitags.pdb file. But there are no chilitags.lib file yet so, if we want to generate a chilitags.lib file we have to go to the project properties (right click on chilitags project and choose properties) => Librarian => General and it 'Output file', instead of $(OutDir)$(TargetName)$(TargetExt), write C:\Users\Ahmed\Documents\chilitags\build\src\Debug\chilitags.lib (I did it for Debug mode and I built chilitags in Debug but I guess it is also possible to build it in Release). Now, if we build chilitags, a chilitags.lib file will be generated in C:\Users\Ahmed\Documents\chilitags\build\src\Debug. I still don't know if this is correct, I have to check it in Qt Creator.
  • Download and install Qt and QtCreator for windows (for the latest visual studio): http://www.qt.io/download-open-source/#section-2
  • Clone and open your qml-chilitags project in qtcreator. For adding a library, I did a right click on the project folder and I clicked on Add Library there I chose external library => for the library file, I chose the chilitags.lib file generated in the previous steps. For the include path, I chose chilitags\include. And, in the header files, instead of '#include <chilitags/chilitags.hpp>' I wrote '#include <chilitags.hpp>'. I did more or less the same for including opencv in my project but for the library files, I chose 'C:\opencv\build\x86\vc12\lib\opencv_world300d.lib' and, for the include path, 'C:\opencv\build\include'. I did the same for opencv_ts300d.lib library and then I ran qmake. Now auto-completion seems to work for opencv and chilitags.
  • We need to see if qtcreator generates an .exe file with all the dependencies inside, or we need a proper application installer...