{"id":628,"date":"2012-11-25T01:45:15","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T00:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/?page_id=628"},"modified":"2012-11-28T01:12:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T00:12:26","slug":"google-ceres-solver","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/?page_id=628","title":{"rendered":"Google Ceres Solver – Compilation with VC2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while back Google released their nonlinear least-squares minimizer, Ceres<\/a>, to the public as open source. The tech is really good and very difficult to build by yourself, so I really applaud them for doing so.<\/p>\n

Regrettably, it has been an incredible pain to get it to work under Windows. Mostly the glog dependency just didn’t play nice with my compiler.<\/p>\n

In the end I got it to work with Visual Studio 2012 Express, and these are the exact steps I did to get there. This is probably helpful for those who are having trouble.<\/p>\n

Downloads<\/strong>
\n1. Get the Ceres Solver source code (tar.gz) from http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/ceres-solver<\/a> (v1.4.0 at time of writing)
\n2. Get the Google Commandline Flags source code from http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/gflags<\/a> (v2.0 at time of writing)
\n3. Get the Google Logger source code from http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/google-glog<\/a> (v0.3.2 at time of writing)
\n4. Get a forked version from CXSparse from https:\/\/github.com\/PetterS\/CXSparse<\/a> (v3.1.1 at time of writing)
\n5. Get the Eigen3 library from http:\/\/eigen.tuxfamily.org<\/a> (v3.1.2 at time of writing)
\n6. Get CMake from http:\/\/www.cmake.org\/<\/a> (v2.8.10 at time of writing)<\/p>\n

Installation<\/strong>
\n1. Install CMake (if you haven’t already)<\/p>\n

Folder structure<\/strong>
\n1. Create a base folder ‘ceres’
\n2. Extract the Ceres Solver source to its own subfolder ‘ceres\/ceres-solver’
\n3. Extract the gflags source to its own subfolder ‘ceres\/gflags’
\n4. Extract the glog source to its own subfolder ‘ceres\/glog’
\n5. Extract the CXSparse source to its own subfolder ‘ceres\/cxsparse’
\n6. Extract the Eigen source to its own subfolder ‘ceres\/eigen’<\/p>\n

gflags<\/strong>
\n1. Open the solution ‘ceres\/gflags\/gflags.sln’
\n2. Auto-migrate the solution to MSVC2012, enable one-way upgrades for all projects
\n3. Toggle ‘release’ mode compilation
\n4. Compile the project (expect 49 warnings, 0 errors)<\/p>\n

glog<\/strong>
\n1. Open the solution ‘ceres\/glog\/google-glog.sln’
\n2. Auto-migrate the solution to MSVC2012, enable one-way upgrades for all projects
\n3. Open the ‘port.h’ file and comment line that says ‘#define hash hash_compare’ (line 97); or wrap it in a #if (_MSC_VER < 1700)\n4. Open the 'logging.cc' file and replace the line '_asm int 3' (line 1262) with '__debugbreak();' (for 64 bit compilation compatibiltiy)\n5. Toggle 'release' mode compilation\n6. Compile the project (expect 5 warnings)\n\nCXSparse<\/strong>
\n1. Open the solution ‘ceres\/cxsparse\/Project\/CXSparse\/CXSparse.sln’
\n2. Update compiler and libraries
\n3. Toggle ‘release’ mode compilation
\n4. Compile the project (expect 6 warnings)<\/p>\n

At this point we’re ready to start creating the solution for Ceres Solver… start CMake-Gui. In this part, make sure to use the complete, absolute paths to all includes and libraries.
\nCMake<\/strong>
\n1. Set ‘Where is the source code’ to the ‘ceres\/ceres-solver’ folder
\n2. Set ‘Where to build the binaries’ to ‘ceres\/build’
\n3. Click ‘configure’, ‘create new directory’ and specify ‘Visual Studio 11’ as the generator for this project
\n4. Set the ‘CXSPARSE_INCLUDE’ value to earlier extracted ‘ceres\/cxsparse\/Include’
\n5. Set the ‘CXSPARSE_LIB’ value to the earlier compiled ‘ceres\/cxsparse\/Lib\/CXSparse.lib’
\n6. Set the ‘GFLAGS_LIB’ value to the earlier compiled ‘ceres\/gflags\/Release\/libgflags.lib’
\n7. Click ‘configure’
\n8. Set the ‘GFLAGS_INCLUDE’ value to the earlier extracted ‘ceres\/gflags\/src\/windows’
\n9. Click ‘configure’
\n10. Set the ‘GLOG_LIB’ value to the earlier compiled ‘ceres\/glog\/Release\/libglog.lib’
\n11. Click ‘configure’
\n12. Set the ‘GLOG_INCLUDE’ value to the earlier extracted ‘ceres\/glog\/src\/windows’
\n13. Click ‘configure’
\n14. Set the ‘EIGEN_INCLUDE’ value to the earlier extracted ‘ceres\/eigen’
\n15. Uncheck the ‘BUILD_TESTING’ setting (tests just give lots of compilation errors at this point)
\n16. Click ‘configure’
\n17. Click ‘generate’<\/p>\n

Now we are ready to compile Ceres Solver.
\n1. Open ‘ceres\/build\/CERES.sln’
\n2. Right click on the ‘ceres’ project and go to the project properties
\n3. Toggle ‘All Configurations’
\n4. In the ‘C\/C++ \/ Preprocessor \/ Preprocessor Definitions’ add ‘GLOG_NO_ABBREVIATED_SEVERITIES’
\n5. Compile the project
\n6. Copy ‘ceres\/gflags\/Release\/libgflags.dll’ to ‘ceres\/build\/bin\/Release’
\n7. Copy ‘ceres\/glog\/Release\/libglog.dll’ to ‘ceres\/build\/bin\/Release’
\n8. Run Powell.exe to test the library<\/p>\n

Aaand it’s working! Using the library in your own projects is a matter of adding the include folders ‘ceres\/ceres-solver\/include’, ‘ceres\/glog\/src\/windows’, ‘ceres\/gflags\/src\/windows’ and ‘ceres\/eigen’, linking to ‘ceres\/build\/lib\/release\/ceres.lib’ and adding the ‘libglog.dll’ and ‘libgflags.dll’ binaries. <\/p>\n

Of course creating debug or 64 bit versions involves doing everything once more, with the relevant compilation flags active at each stage. <\/p>\n

Hope this helps!
\n– GrandMaster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back Google released their nonlinear least-squares minimizer, Ceres, to the public as open source. The tech is really good and very difficult to build by yourself, so I really applaud them for doing so. Regrettably, it has been an incredible pain to get it to work under Windows. Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions\/641"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandmaster.nu\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}