How to get Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide examples working?

Question

Hi,

I recently bought the book: Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide (http://pragprog.com/titles/cfar/augmented-reality). It has example code that it says runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux.

But I can't get the binaries to run. Has anyone got this book and got the binaries to run on ubuntu?

I also can't figure out how to compile the examples in Ubuntu. How would I do this?

Here is what it says to do:

Compiling for Linux Refreshingly, there are no changes required to get the programs in this chapter to compile for Linux, but as with Windows, you’ll first have to find your GL and GLUT files. This may mean you’ll have to download the correct version of GLUT for your machine. You need to link in the GL, GLU, and GLUT libraries and provide a path to the GLUT header file and the files it includes. See whether there is a glut.h file in the /usr/include/GL directory; otherwise, look elsewhere for it—you could use the command find / -name "glut.h" to search your entire machine, or you could use the locate command (locate glut.h). You may need to customize the paths, but here is an example of the compile command: gcc -o opengl_template opengl_template.cpp -I /usr/include/GL -I /usr/include -lGL -lGLU -lglut gcc is a C/C++ compiler that should be present on your Linux or Unix machine. The -I /usr/include/GL command-line argument tells gcc to look in /usr/include/GL for the include files. In this case, you’ll find glut.h and what it includes. When linking in libraries with gcc, you use the -lX switch—where X is the name of your library and there is a correspond- ing libX.a file somewhere in your path. For this example, you want to link in the library files libGL.a, libGLU.a, and libglut.a, so you will use the gcc arguments -lGL -lGLU -lglut. These three files are found in the default directory /usr/lib/, so you don’t need to specify their location as you did with glut.h. If you did need to specify the library path, you would add -L to the path. To run your compiled program, type ./opengl_template or, if the current directory is in your shell’s paths, just opengl_template.

When working in Linux, it’s important to know that you may need to keep your texture files to a maximum of 256 by 256 pixels or find the settings in your system to raise this limit. Often an OpenGL program will work in Windows but produce a blank white texture in Linux until the texture size is reduced.

The above instructions make no sense to me. Do I have to use gcc to compile or can I use eclipse?

If I use either eclipse or gcc what do I need to do to compile and run the program?

Answer 1

You can use eclipse if you wish, but it should make no difference.

Eclipse is just an IDE, that is, a pretty GUI that knows how to interact with the compiler.

The command:

gcc -o opengl_template opengl_template.cpp -I /usr/include/GL -I /usr/include -lGL -lGLU -lglut

Should work from the command line. If you wish you can set up an eclipse project that, when compiled, will call the exact same command line. It looks like you are compiling a single CPP, including the GL headers, and linking with GL, GLU, and GLUT.

It should produce an output executable file named opengl_template

I have not compiled it on Ubuntu, but it shouldn't be that different. You can ignore all that stuff about needing to find the GL libraries. You should already have them.

Good Luck!