Hello,

I work in a microscope core facility and I think Vaa3D can really help our facility clientele. When I downloaded the latest release, v3.597, it came with no plugins. How do I build or add the plugins to Vaa3D? I approached a bio-informatics colleague about building the plugins from source code and we followed the instructions to the letter and used Visual Studio 2013, but we have had many errors and been unsuccessful in building the plugins. What software should we use to build the plugins, including the hackathon plugins? Or is there an easier way to add the plugins to Vaa3D 3.597? The software would be primarily used in computers with Windows 10. Thank you all very much for your consideration.

Mary

You can download Vaa3D release version from this link (https://github.com/Vaa3D/release/release...).
Or, if you want to build Vaa3D by yourself, you can follow the Wiki user page (https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki...).

I did download the latest version of Vaa3D but it lacked the plugins I need to use. My question is, what software should I use to build the plugins from their source code? Visual Studio? What version of Visual Studio works the best? 2015? 2017? 2019? This would be on a Windows 10 computer. I thank you for your consideration.

Mary

If you want to build plugin using windows machine, you can use VS2013.
FYI, this link (https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki...) may guide you build the development environment.

Originally posted by shengdian Jiang: Hi,

I would like to complete on Mary s comment.

I know compiling can be done, but in my experience, the compilation process is long and painful, and not feasible for people with little experience in software developpement. For Windows users in particular, I did follow once your compilation tutorial, and it was honestly a massive hassle, because it required to install quite a  few softwares, and there were typo or missing information at multiple steps  of the tutorial. several complications came from the specificities of qt and VS versions. I have a corrected version from last year and I can message it to you. ( if I find it again).

It has been a few vaa3d versions now without included plugins. As it is probably not so much more work for you, I think it would benefit the community widely if you were doing complete releases again, as in version 3.20. I think not releasing the plugins just turn a lot of users away from vaa3d because they just want to try the software to see how it compares with other tracing methods, but they don't necessarily have hours or days to figure out how to install it. 

Anyway, thanks for this nice software

Best wishes

Antoine

Perhaps the problem comes from the wrong environment variables,please read the reference from the website https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki/Build-Vaa3D-on-Windows-with-qmake-using-VS2013-and-Qt4.8.6 and rebuild the vaa3d.

if you want to build plugin on Vaa3d，you should use the vaa3d prepared for developer and go to (https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki...) to choose version 2013.It will provide the guide for you.

Originally posted by gopher_confocal: Yes,the software would be Visual Studio.But you need to build Vaa3D environment in your computer before building plugins.And the version of VS using for building plugin will be the same one using for building Vaa3D.
So,you got two STEPS to handle your problem.
1.Build Vaa3D:
Please follow the corresponding instruction for different VS versions(https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki...).
PS:Versions of 2010 and 2013 are frequently-used in our case.
2.Build plugins:
In general,enter the directory of your target-plugin folder and run commands"qmake" and "nmake -f Makefile.Release" in your VS command line Terminal.
For more detailed instructions, please check this link:https://github.com/Vaa3D/Vaa3D_Wiki/wiki/CompilePlugins.wiki

My colleague and I attempted to build the plugins within Visual Studio 2013, but we repeatedly get errors that have made all of our efforts unsuccessful. It sounds like the software building is not recommended in later versions of Visual Studio. 

It would be wonderful if complete versions of the software were released. Due to this deficiency, I will no longer recommend Vaa3D to our microscope core facility patrons.

Could you tell me the step in which you meet the problem? Perhaps I can help you solve it.

Will there ever come a time when we can rebuild Vaa3D with the latest versions of Qt and Visual Studio?

for which OS?
Originally posted by gopher_confocal:

Originally posted by Hanchuan Peng: Sorry, I should have specified this: Windows 10