Meshlab Linux Howto Requirements: Qt 4.x.x lib3ds (lib3ds.sf.net) GLEW (glew.sf.net) VCG (vcg.sf.net) To compile meshlab on linux you need the development packages of the above libreries. Qt, lib3ds and glew are probably packaged with your distribution. On Debian for example you must install them with apt-get install libglew-dev libqt4-dev lib3ds-dev VCG library (from vcg.sf.net) instead is distributed only in source form . In order to download this library you can follow SourceForge CVS instructions. For example : mario@ath64:~/src$ cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@vcg.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/vcg login Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@vcg.cvs.sourceforge.net:2401/cvsroot/vcg CVS password: [empty password] mario@ath64:~/src$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@vcg.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/vcg co -P vcg cvs checkout: Updating vcg cvs checkout: Updating vcg/apps cvs checkout: Updating vcg/apps/borland U vcg/apps/borland/metro.bpf ... [other files] ... Now you have the VCG library source files downloaded in local (in this example ~/src/vcg), however the VCG directory must be at the same level of meshlab directory and named "sf". This can be a symbolic link, as in this case : mario@ath64:~/src$ ls -l sf lrwxrwxrwx 1 mario mario 3 2005-10-19 19:59 sf -> vcg Alternatively you can rename vcg directory to sf. Now you can download meshlab either from CVS or from sources (the instructions to get sources from CVS are similar to VCG ones). Place meshlab sources at the same level of "sf" directory, for example: mario@ath64:~/src$ ls -l -d meshlab sf drwx------ 7 mario mario 200 2005-12-22 15:02 meshlab lrwxrwxrwx 1 mario mario 3 2005-10-19 19:59 sf -> vcg - Compilation, Plugins First you need to compile plugins, so switch to meshlab/src/meshlabplugins directory: mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src$ cd meshlabplugins/ mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src/meshlabplugins$ ls CVS meshdecorate meshio meshrender dummy meshcolorize meshfilter meshlabplugins.pro the run qmake to create the Makefile mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src/meshlabplugins$ ls CVS Makefile meshdecorate meshio meshrender dummy meshcolorize meshfilter meshlabplugins.pro now run make to build the plugins in ../meshlab/plugins directory (in this example ~/src/meshlab/src/meshlab/plugins) When the compilation process finishes you should have the following files in ../meshlab/plugins libmeshfilter.so libmeshcolorize.so libmeshio.so libmeshdecorate.so libmeshrender.so - Compilation, Meshlab After compiling plugins, compile the main program (stored in directory ~/src/meshlab/src/meshlab in this example): mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src/meshlab$ qmake mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src/meshlab$ make Now you should have an executable file named meshlab in the current directory. Let's start it: mario@ath64:~/src/meshlab/src/meshlab$ ./meshlab