QtiPlot - Installation Notes

License:

QtiPlot is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Thus it is "free software". "Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer". "Free software" is also often called Open Source, FOSS, or FLOSS.

General requirements:

You need to install the following libraries: Qt (>= 4.5.0), GSL, muParser (1.28), zlib, libpng and BOOST C++ libraries.

The QtiPlot developers also work very actively on the liborigin2 library. The development version of this library is shipped with QtiPlot in the "3rdparty" folder and does not need to be compiled or installed separately. The same considerations apply for the QwtPlot3D library.

You must use the slightly modified version of the Qwt (5.2) library which is shipped with QtiPlot in the "3rdparty/qwt" folder.

If you need Python scripting support, don't forget to download and install Python, SIP and PyQt4.
In order to build QtiPlot you also need qmake, which is distributed as a part of Qt.

Linux/Mac OS X:

Binaries from maintenance contracts:

Ion Vasilief offers supported QtiPlot binaries as Debian packages (for Debian, Ubuntu, ...) as well as for Mac OS X (>= 10.4). The packages provide all needed libraries, except Python and Qt (on Linux), which must be installed separately on your system.

QtiPlot Linux binaries free of charge:

The QtiPlot team offers GNU/Linux binaries free of charge but without any guaranteed support.
To use this service, you need to subscribe to a maintenance contract. You can find details about this here: QtiPlot download page.
To install the Debian package, download the file qtiplot_X.X.X_i386.deb and login to your machine as "root" (on Ubuntu, login as a normal user and prepend sudo), then open a terminal and execute the following command:
dpkg -i qtiplot_X.X.X_i386.deb
To install the binary package on Mac OS X, download the file qtiplot-X.X.X.pkg.zip, unzip it, double-click on the "qtiplot-X.X.X.pkg" file and follow the installation instructions. Some time after each release, you will find these (including notes how to install them) on the QtiPlot download page or in the files section at the QtiPlot project page at berliOS.

Compiling QtiPlot from source:

  1. Install all the dependencies listed above either from your package manager or from the sources. If you are using precompiled packages, make sure you also install the corresponding development packages (*-dev or *-devel). If you want to display the manual from within QtiPlot (you can also view it with your favorite browser), you also need the Qt Assistant, which sometimes comes in a separate package (qt4-dev-tools for Ubuntu edgy).
  2. Open a terminal window.
  3. Download the .tar.bz2 archive with QtiPlot's sources (or the .zip archive, which has the same contents):
    wget http://soft.proindependent.com/src/qtiplot-X.X.X.tar.bz2
  4. Unpack the source archive: tar -xvjf qtiplot-X.X.X.tar.bz2 (or unzip qtiplot-X.X.X.zip, respectively)
  5. Go to the main directory qtiplot-X.X.X:
    cd qtiplot-X.X.X
  6. Create a build.conf file. You can use the provided example for this:
    cp build.conf.example build.conf
  7. Open build.conf in your favorite editor. Near the bottom of the same file, either comment out the line SCRIPTING_LANGS += Python or make sure you have the following additional dependencies installed: Python, SIP and PyQt4
  8. Build qtiplot:
    qmake && make
  9. Install QtiPlot on your system (you need root privileges):
    sudo make install
    or, alternatively,
    su -c "make install"

Windows:

Binaries from maintenance contracts:

Ion Vasilief offers supported QtiPlot Windows binaries. In principle QtiPlot should work on any Windows version from 98 to Vista. But don't expect it to run perfectly on older versions than 2000. For platform specific issues of Qt4 based applications see doc.trolltech.com.
To install:
  1. Download the qtiplot-X.X.X.exe file.
  2. Open a Windows Explorer, double click on 'qtiplot-X.X.X.exe' and follow the installation instructions.

Compiling QtiPlot from source:

The compilation process requires the same steps as explained above in the Linux/Mac OS X section.

Forums and mailing lists:

If you want to discuss QtiPlot with other users (or the developers) or if you are insterested in its further development, you can go to the relevant QtiPlot forum or subscribe to the appropriate QtiPlot mailing list.