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    <title>How to compile</title>





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        <p>
           To use this library all you have to do is extract it somewhere, make sure the folder <i>containing</i> 
           the dlib folder is in your include path, and finally add <a href="dlib/all/source.cpp.html">dlib/all/source.cpp</a> 
           to your project.  It is worth noting that most of dlib is "header-only" which means that, in many cases, you
           don't actually have to build dlib/all/source.cpp into your application.  So if you don't get linker 
           errors when you exclude dlib/all/source.cpp from your project then you don't need it.
        </p>
        <p>
            An example makefile that uses this library can be found here: 
            <a href="dlib/test/makefile">dlib/test/makefile</a>.  It is the makefile used to build the regression 
            test suite for this library.  There is also a 
            <a href="http://www.cmake.org">CMake</a> makefile that builds the 
            regression test suite at <a href="dlib/test/CMakeLists.txt.html">dlib/test/CMakeLists.txt</a> and another
            CMake makefile that builds all the example programs at 
            <a href="examples/CMakeLists.txt.html">examples/CMakeLists.txt</a>
        </p>
        <p>
        I try to make sure everything compiles fine under Visual Studio .NET 2005 (and above) and gcc (4.1 and above).  
        </p>
        <p>
           Again, note that you should <b><i>not</i></b> add the dlib folder itself to your compiler's include path.  
           Doing so will cause the
           build to fail because of name collisions (such as dlib/string.h and string.h from the standard library).  
           Instead you should add the folder that contains the dlib folder to your include search path and then use 
           include statements of the form <tt>#include &lt;dlib/queue.h&gt;</tt>.  This will ensure that everything 
           builds correctly.
        </p>

         <p>
            Finally, note that <a href="dlib/revision.h.html">dlib/revision.h</a> defines DLIB_MAJOR_VERSION
            and DLIB_MINOR_VERSION which are #defines you can use to see what version of dlib you have.  
         </p>

        <center><h1>Examples</h1></center>


        <h2>Compiling on Any Operating System Using CMake</h2>
        The simplest way to compile the example programs is to use <a href="http://www.cmake.org">CMake</a>.  
        You can do this by typing the following on the command line.
<code_box>
cd examples
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --config Release
</code_box>
Note that you also need to have a C++ compiler installed on your system.  There are free C++ compilers
for most operating systems.  For example, Visual Studio Express is free on Windows and GCC is free and
works well on Mac OS X and Linux systems.

        <h2>Compiling on Linux From Command Line</h2>
        From within the examples folder, you can compile any of the examples with a single command like so:
<code_box>
g++ -O3 -I.. -lpthread -lX11 ../dlib/all/source.cpp example_program_name.cpp
</code_box>
        Note that not all examples require this much work.  For example, the svm_ex.cpp example
        can be compiled with just:
<code_box>
g++ -O3 -I.. svm_ex.cpp
</code_box>

On non-Linux systems like Solaris, you might have to link to other libraries.  For example, I have seen systems
where it was also necessary to supply -lnsl or -lsocket options to g++.  Additionally, the X11 development
library isn't installed on Ubuntu by default.  So if you require it and are using Ubuntu you can install
it by typing:
<code_box>
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev
</code_box>

        <h2>Compiling on Windows Using GCC</h2>
        <p>
            The commands for gcc on windows are the same as above but you may also have to link 
            (via the -l option) to the following libraries: gdi32, comctl32, user32, ws2_32, or imm32.
            However, it's worth pointing out that Visual Studio Express is free and a much better choice for
            windows development than gcc.
        </p>

        <h2>Compiling on Windows Using Visual Studio</h2>
        <p>
           All you need to do is create an empty console project. Then add dlib/all/source.cpp to it and add the
           folder containing the dlib folder to the #include search path.  Then you can compile any example program 
           by adding it to your project.  
        </p>


        <center><h1>Preprocessor Directives</h1></center>

         <p>
            There are a few preprocessor directives you can supply during the build process
            to cause the library to build in various optional ways.  By default, the
            library will always do something reasonable, but they are listed here in the
            event that you need to use them.
         </p>


         <anchor>ENABLE_ASSERTS</anchor>
        <h3>#define ENABLE_ASSERTS</h3>
        <p>
           Defining this directive causes all the <a href="metaprogramming.html#DLIB_ASSERT">DLIB_ASSERT</a> macros to
           be active.  If you are using visual studio or CMake then ENABLE_ASSERTS will be automatically enabled
           for you when you compile in debug mode.  However, if you are using a different build system then you
           might have to manually enable it if you want to turn the asserts on.
        </p>

         <anchor>DLIB_ISO_CPP_ONLY</anchor>
        <h3>#define DLIB_ISO_CPP_ONLY</h3>
        <p>
           This is a #define directive that you can set to cause the library to exclude all non ISO C++ code (The things in the <a href="api.html">API wrappers</a> section and any objects that depend on those wrappers).
           This is useful if you are trying to build on a system that isn't fully supported by the library or if you 
           just decide you don't want any of that stuff compiled into your program for your own reasons.
        </p>
         <anchor>DLIB_NO_GUI_SUPPORT</anchor>
        <h3>#define DLIB_NO_GUI_SUPPORT</h3>
        <p>
           This is just like the DLIB_ISO_CPP_ONLY option except that it excludes only the GUI part of the library.
           An example of when you might want to use this would be if you don't need GUI support and you are building
           on a UNIX platform that doesn't have the X11 headers installed.
        </p>
         <anchor>NO_MAKEFILE</anchor>
        <h3>#define NO_MAKEFILE</h3>
        <p>
           This preprocessor directive causes the dlib headers to pull in all the 
           code that would normally be built in dlib/all/source.cpp.  Thus if you #define NO_MAKEFILE you won't 
           have to add dlib/all/source.cpp to your project.  The <i>only</i> time this is useful is when your 
           project consists of a single translation unit (i.e. a single cpp file).  In this instance NO_MAKEFILE
           allows you to easily build your project on the command line by saying something like <tt>g++ -DNO_MAKEFILE
           project.cpp</tt>.  But again, this is only for single cpp file projects.  If you use NO_MAKEFILE with projects 
           that contain more than one cpp file you will get linker errors about multiply defined symbols.
        </p>
        <p>
           Also note that if you use this macro then the <a href="metaprogramming.html#DLIB_STACK_TRACE">stack trace</a>
           functionality in the library will be disabled.   
        </p>
         <anchor>DLIB_THREAD_POOL_TIMEOUT</anchor>
        <h3>#define DLIB_THREAD_POOL_TIMEOUT &lt;time-in-milliseconds&gt;</h3>
        <p>
           If you use dlib to create your threads then you receive the benefit of the dlib dynamic thread pool (Note that the 
           dlib::<a href="api.html#thread_pool">thread_pool</a> object is something else unrelated to this so don't confuse
           the two).  This pool 
           enables dlib to spawn new threads very rapidly since it draws threads back out of its thread pool when 
           the pool isn't empty. 
        </p>
        <p>
           Thus, when a thread that was created by dlib ends it actually goes back into the dlib thread pool
           and waits DLIB_THREAD_POOL_TIMEOUT milliseconds before totally terminating and releasing its resources back
           to the operating system.  The default timeout used by this library is 30,000 milliseconds (30 seconds).  You
           may however change this to whatever you like by defining DLIB_THREAD_POOL_TIMEOUT to some new value.  
        </p>



    
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