Contents 1 Overview 2 Prerequisites 3 How to Compile 4 Build results

Overview

The Bio-Formats C++ bindings provide language bindings for calling into the Bio-Formats Java library from C++ in a cross-platform manner. As of this writing the bindings are functional with GCC on Linux and Mac OS X systems, as well as with Visual C++ 2005 and Visual C++ 2008 on Windows.

Prerequisites

The following packages should be installed in order:

1. Installing CMake
2. Installing Apache Ant
3. Installing Subversion
4. Installing Boost Thread
5. Installing Java Development Kit
6. Downloading Jace

How to Compile

Once you have the required tools and libraries installed, you must first build the loci_tools.jar library:

1. Change to the root directory of the checkout;
2. Execute the command:

 ant tools

Finally, you can compile the Bio-Formats C++ bindings:

1. Change to the components/native/bf-cpp directory;
2. Execute the command:

 ant -Djace.home=/path/to/jace

Where /path/to/jace is the location of your Jace source code checkout. Do not use a relative path, and use forward slashes, even on Windows.

If all goes well, the build system will:

1. Build the Jace Java and C++ libraries;
2. Generate the Bio-Formats C++ proxy classes;
3. Build the Bio-Formats C++ shared library;
4. Build the showinf command line tool, for testing the functionality.

Please be patient, as the build may require several minutes to complete.

Build results

Afterwards, the build subdirectory will contain the following files:

1. libjace.so / libjace.jnilib / jace.dll : Jace shared library
2. libbfjace.so / libbfjace.dylib / bfjace.dll : Bio-Formats C++ bindings
3. jace-runtime.jar : Jace Java classes needed at runtime
4. loci_tools.jar : Bio-Formats Java library needed at runtime
5. showinf / showinf.exe : Example command line application

Items 1-4 are necessary and required to deploy Bio-Formats with your C++ application. All other files, including the showinf program and various build files generated by CMake, are not needed.

If you prefer, instead of using the loci_tools.jar bundle, you can provide individual JAR files as appropriate for your application. For details, see:

 http://www.loci.wisc.edu/ome/formats-library.html

Please direct questions to the Bio-Formats team at bioformats@loci.wisc.edu.