Required Software

Before building & modifying C++ projects, you will need the prerequisites:

• Git: For version control (GitHub)
• CMake: Creates makefiles from CMakeLists.txt
• MinGW: Build windows binaries (.exe) from makefiles

Installing Git

• Download from https://git-scm.com/downloads
• Run executable to install Git
• Check functionality by opening up Command Prompt and running:

git --help

Installing CMake

• Download from https://cmake.org/download/
• Run executable to install CMake
• Check functionality by opening up Command Prompt and running:

cmake --help

Installing MinGW

• Download MinGW (Win32) from winlibs (NOT the out-of-date sourceforge installer)
• Make C:\MinGW folder
• Dump the contents of .zip subfolder mingw32 into C:\MinGW
• Make sure C:\MinGW\bin exists
• Add C:\MinGW\bin to (USER, not SYSTEM) Path environment variable
• Check functionality by opening up (or restarting) Command Prompt and running:

mingw32-make --help

Required Libraries (for VDC)

Required libraries for this project (installed under vdc\lib) are:

• Armadillo: For Matlab-like numerical manipulation
• glad: Complementary library for glfw
• GLFW: For creating OpenGL window (Windows, macOS, or Linux Wayland/X11)
• ImGui: For main (immediate-mode) GUI
• ImPlot: Plotting extension for ImPlot
• json: Read/write .json files

Installing Armadillo

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone https://gitlab.com/conradsnicta/armadillo-code.git

Installing glad

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone --single-branch --branch c https://github.com/Dav1dde/glad.git

Installing GLFW

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone https://github.com/glfw/glfw.git

• Building (Windows):

cd wherever_youve_installed_this\vdc\lib\GLFW
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -G "MinGW Makefiles"
mingw32-make

Installing ImGui

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone https://github.com/ocornut/imgui.git

Installing ImPlot

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone https://github.com/epezent/implot.git

Installing json

• Into Command Prompt:

git clone https://github.com/nlohmann/json.git