Compiling OTB from source¶
This section covers the compilation of OTB from source code using CMake. If you just need to install OTB and Monteverdi, follow instructions from the Installation section.
OTB is known to work on:
- Visual Studio 2019 on Windows 10
- GCC 5 or higher, Clang 3.4 or higher on GNU/Linux
- AppleClang on macOS 10.8 or higher (intel, no ARM like the M1)
The C++14 standard is required since version 6.2.0.
OTB depends on a number of external libraries. Some are mandatory, meaning that OTB cannot be compiled without them, while others (the majority) are optional and can be activated or not during the build process:
| Library | Mandatory | Minimum version | Superbuild Version |
| Boost | Yes | 1.72.0 | |
| Expat | Yes | 2.4.8 | |
| FreeType | Yes | 2.6.0 | |
| Geos | Yes | 3.9.3 / 3.6.5 (windows) | |
| ITK | Yes | 4.6.0 | 4.13.3 |
| GDAL | Yes | 2.4.1 | 3.4.2 / 3.2.2 (windows) |
| HDF4 | Yes | 4.2.13 | |
| HDF5 | Yes | 1.10.1 | |
| libgeotiff | Yes | 1.7.1 | |
| libjpeg-turbo | Yes | 1.5.3 | |
| libpng | Yes | 1.6.37 | |
| libtiff | Yes | 4.4.0 | |
| NetCDF | Yes | 4.7.4 | |
| Noto Fonts | Yes | ||
| OpenJPEG | Yes | 2.3.1 | |
| PROJ | Yes | 8.2.0 / 6.2.1 (windows) | |
| SQLITE | Yes | 3.36.0 / 3.8.8 (windows) | |
| tinyXML | Yes | 2.6.2 | |
| ZLIB | Yes | 1.2.12 | |
| 6S | No | ||
| Curl | No | 7.54.1 | |
| FFTW | No | 3.3.10 | |
| GLEW | No | 1.13 | |
| GLFW | No | 3 | 3.1.2 |
| GLUT | No | 2.8.1 | |
| GSL | No | 2.3.0 | |
| libKML | No | 1.2 | 1.3.0 |
| libSVM | No | 2.0 | 3.25 |
| MPI | No | ||
| MuParser | No | 2.3.2 | |
| MuParserX | No | 4.0.7 | 4.0.8 |
| OpenCV | No | 3.0.0 | 4.6.0 |
| OPENGL | No | ||
| OpenSSL | No | 1.1.1k | |
| PCRE | No | 8.45 | |
| Qt | No | 5 | 5.15.2 |
| QWT | No | 6 | 6.1.6 |
| Shark | No | 4 | 4.0 |
| SiftFast | No | ||
| SPTW | No | ||
| SWIG | No | 4.0.2 |
GNU/Linux and macOS¶
Setting up the build environment¶
Note: On some distributions, gcc 5+ is not available by default. For example in CentOS 7 the default version is 4.8 (gcc 7 can be installed using devtoolset, see devtoolset6 and devtoolset7).
The first thing to do is to create a directory for working with OTB.
This guide will use ~/OTB but you are free to choose something
else. In this directory, there will be three locations:
~/OTB/otbfor the source git repository~/OTB/buildfor the intermediate build objects, CMake specific files, libraries and binaries.~/OTB/install, the installation directory for OTB once it is built. A system location (/usr/localfor example) can also be used, but installing locally is more flexible and does not require root access.
$ mkdir ~/OTB
$ cd ~/OTB
$ git clone https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/otb.git
$ mkdir build
$ mkdir install
The OTB project uses a git branching model where develop is the current
development version. It contains the latest patches and represents the work in
progress towards the next release. master is the latest stable release.
Checkout the branch you want to build now:
$ cd ~/OTB/otb
$ git checkout develop
Now, there are two ways of compiling OTB from source, depending on how you want to manage dependencies. Both methods rely on CMake.
- SuperBuild: All OTB dependencies are automatically downloaded and compiled. This method is the easiest to use and provides a complete OTB with minimal effort.
- Normal build: OTB dependencies must already be compiled and available on your system. This method requires more work but provides more flexibility.
If you do not know which method to use and just want to compile OTB with all its modules, use the SuperBuild.
Important CMake configuration variables:
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: Installation directory, target formake installBUILD_EXAMPLES: Activate compilation of OTB examplesBUILD_TESTING: Activate compilation of the testsOTB_BUILD_DEFAULT_MODULES: Activate all usual modules, required to build the examplesOTB_USE_XXX: Activate module XXXOTBGroup_XXX: Enable modules in the group XXXOTB_DATA_ROOT: otb-data repositoryOTB_WRAP_PYTHON: Enable Python wrapper
SuperBuild only:
DOWNLOAD_LOCATION: Location to download dependenciesUSE_SYSTEM_XXX: Use the system’s XXX library
SuperBuild: Build OTB and all dependencies¶
IMPORTANT NOTE : the LIBKML sources are no longer available, but some distributions such as Ubuntu until 22.04
still packages it, so to build with LIBKML support, you should set OTB_USE_LIBKML=ON and USE_SYSTEM_LIBKML=ON
OTB’s compilation is customized by specifying configuration variables.
The most important configuration variables are shown in the
table above. The simplest way to provide
configuration variables is via the command line -D option:
$ cd ~/OTB/build
$ cmake -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/OTB/install ../otb/SuperBuild
You can also set variables manually with cmake-gui or ccmake.
Please note that the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable is important
because the SuperBuild will install some targets during the compilation
step. Therefore this directory will be used even if you don’t use make
install target. In fact there is no make install target for the
SuperBuild. Also note that if not specified to cmake, a default install
dir will be used, located in ../superbuild_install.
By default, SuperBuild will not use any of libraries installed on
system. All USE_SYSTEM_XXX are set to OFF. This is our recommended
way of using SuperBuild. You are however free to use a system library if
you want! You must be very much aware of dependencies of those
libraries you use from system. For example, if libjpeg is not used from
superbuild then you should not use zlib from superbuild because zlib is
a dependency of libjpeg. Here SuperBuild will NOT set
USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB=FALSE. One must re-run cmake with
-DUSE_SYSTEM_ZLIB=FALSE. Above example of libjpeg-zlib dependency is
so simple. Imagine the case for GDAL which depends on zlib, libjpeg,
libtiff (with big tiff support), geotiff, sqlite, curl, geos, libkml,
openjpeg. This is one of the reasons we recommend to use SuperBuild
exclusively.
All dependencies are configured and built in a way that help us to get an efficient OTB build. So we enable geotiff (with proj4 support), openjpeg, geos in GDAL build.
SuperBuild downloads dependencies into the DOWNLOAD_LOCATION directory,
which will be ~/OTB/build/Downloads in our example. Dependencies can be
downloaded manually into this directory before the compilation step. This can be
useful if you wish to bypass a proxy, intend to compile OTB without an internet
connection, or other network constraints. You can find an archive with sources
of all our dependencies on the Orfeo ToolBox website (pick the ’SuperBuild-archives’
corresponding to the OTB version you want to build).
Notes about GDAL: Since OTB 7.0, SuperBuild’s GDAL version is 2.4.1. This version needs pkg-config to correctly find OpenJPEG (needed to read and write images with formats such as .jp2, .j2k), the minimal version is 0.21 for GDAL 2.4.1. You can install it with:
apt-get install pkg-config
Notes about Qt: Unlike other dependencies, building Qt5 on all platforms is not a trivial task but OTB SuperBuild does its best to facilitate this for the user. So there is still some additional package installation, one has to do as a pre-requistie for SuperBuild On a GNU/Linux you must have Qt X11 dependencies installed. See Qt 5 documentation for the list of packages that need to be installed before starting SuperBuild.
For example for a Debian 8.1 system, all Qt5 dependencies can be installed with the following ’apt-get install’ command:
apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxt-dev libxi-dev libxrandr-dev libgl-dev libglu-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev
You can also deactivate Qt5 and skip this by passing
-DOTB_USE_QT=OFF to CMake, but this will install OTB without
Monteverdi, Mapla and the GUI application launchers.
You are now ready to compile OTB! Simply use the make command (other
targets can be generated with CMake’s -G option):
$ cd ~/OTB/build
$ make
Applications will be located in the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin/ directory:
~/OTB/install/bin/otbcli_ExtractROI
will launch the command line version of the ExtractROI application, while:
~/OTB/install/bin/otbgui_ExtractROI
will launch the graphical version.
In order to ensure access to your OTB build from anywhere within your
system, we recommend setting the following environment variables.
First, add bin/ directory to your PATH for easy access:
export PATH=$PATH:~/OTB/install/bin
Second, add the lib/ directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/OTB/install/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Monteverdi is part of OTB module and is compiled by the SuperBuild if GLEW, GLUT, OPENGL, Qt and QWT modules are activated.
To use OTB applications from within Monteverdi you will need to define
the OTB_APPLICATION_PATH environment variable:
export OTB_APPLICATION_PATH=~/OTB/install/lib/otb/applications
monteverdi
Normal build: Build only OTB¶
Once all OTB dependencies are availables on your system, use CMake to generate a Makefile:
$ cd ~/OTB/build
$ cmake -C configuration.cmake ../otb
The script configuration.cmake needs to contain dependencies
location if CMake cannot find them automatically. This can be done with
the XXX_DIR variables containing the directories which contain the
FindXXX.cmake scripts, or with the XXX_INCLUDEDIR and
XXX_LIBRARY variables.
Additionally, decide which module you wish to enable, together with tests and examples. Refer to table above for the list of CMake variables.
OTB is modular. It is possible to only build some modules
instead of the whole set. To deactivate a module (and the ones that
depend on it) switch off the CMake variable
OTB_BUILD_DEFAULT_MODULES, configure, and then switch off each
Module_module_name variable.
Some of the OTB capabilities are considered as optional, and you can
deactivate the related modules thanks to a set of CMake variables
starting with OTB_USE_XXX. The table below shows which modules
are associated to these variables. It is very important to notice that
these variable override the variable OTB_BUILD_DEFAULT_MODULES.
You are now ready to compile OTB! Simply use the make command (other
targets can be generated with CMake’s -G option):
$ make
The installation target will copy the binaries and libraries to the installation location:
$ make install
| CMake variable | 3rd party module | Modules depending on it |
| OTB_USE_LIBKML | OTBlibkml | OTBKMZWriter OTBIOKML OTBAppKMZ |
| OTB_USE_QT | OTBQt | OTBQtWidget |
| OTB_USE_QWT | OTBQwt | OTBMonteverdiGUI OTBMonteverdi |
| OTB_USE_GLEW | OTBGlew | OTBIce OTBMonteverdiGUI OTBMonteverdi |
| OTB_USE_OPENGL | OTBOpenGL | OTBIce OTBMonteverdiGUI OTBMonteverdi |
| OTB_USE_CURL | OTBCurl | |
| OTB_USE_MUPARSER | OTBMuParser | OTBMathParser OTBDempsterShafer OTBAppClassification OTBAppMathParser OTBAppStereo OTBAppProjection OTBAppSegmentation OTBRoadExtraction OTBRCC8 OTBCCOBIA OTBMeanShift |
| OTB_USE_MUPARSERX | OTBMuParserX | OTBMathParserX OTBAppMathParserX |
| OTB_USE_LIBSVM | OTBLibSVM | optional for OTBSupervised OTBAppClassification |
| OTB_USE_OPENCV | OTBOpenCV | optional for OTBSupervised OTBAppClassification |
| OTB_USE_SHARK | OTBShark | optional for OTBSupervised OTBAppClassification |
| OTB_USE_6S | OTB6S | OTBOpticalCalibration OTBAppOpticalCalibration OTBSimulation |
| OTB_USE_SIFTFAST | OTBSiftFast |
Table: Third parties and related modules.
Windows¶
Everything that is needed for OTB development on Windows, including compiling from source, is covered in details on the OTB wiki at:
http://wiki.orfeo-toolbox.org/index.php/OTB_development_on_Windows
Known issues¶
Please check our gitlab tracker for a list of open bugs.
Tests¶
There are more than 2500 tests for OTB. It can take from 20 minutes to 3 hours to run them all, depending on compilation options (release mode does make a difference) and hardware.
To run the tests, first make sure to set the option
BUILD_TESTING to ON before building the library. If you want to run the tests for the
python API, you will also need to install the python module pytest.
For some of the tests, you also need the test data and the baselines (~1GB). These files are stored using git-lfs in the Data folder at the root of otb sources. To download them, you have to make sure git-lfs is installed before cloning otb (binaries for git lfs are available for different OS here).
After downloading, add the binary to $PATH and run git lfs install. You can then clone otb sources :
git clone https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/otb.git
Once OTB is built with the tests, you just have to go to the binary
directory where you built OTB and run ctest -N to have a list of all
the tests. Just using ctest will run all the tests. To select a
subset, you can do ctest -R Kml to run all tests related to kml
files or ctest -I 1,10 to run tests from 1 to 10.
Compiling documentation¶
To build the CookBook documentation, the following python packages are required:
numpy, sphinx, sphinx_rtd_theme. They are available on pip:
pip install numpy sphinx sphinx_rtd_theme
Enable Python bindings and set BUILD_COOKBOOK:
cmake -DOTB_WRAP_PYTHON=ON -DBUILD_COOKBOOK=ON .
Then, build the target:
make CookbookHTML