VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2011 - 10:06:44 CST

Hi Ajasja,
  It's not off topic and nobody will flame you. :)
Doing 64-bit Windows builds is on my TODO list, but if I make one it will
only be considered "experimental" at present. I'll have to see how stable
Tcl/Tk/FLTK are on Windows x64 before I commit. I understand that you're
anxious to be able to use more physical memory, and I'm working on this stuff,
but I'm the only developer working on the core of VMD and these things take
time. I am planning to make another VMD release already this summer, and
64-bit Windows and MacOS X versions are two of the items slated for that
release. If I am able to get a 64-bit Windows build running well, I may make
it available as an experimental build for people to try out, but it won't
be an "official" binary for the imminent VMD 1.9 release.

The other thing to keep in mind, is that we always make test versions of
VMD available between official releases usually about once every week or
so, and so the instant I have a 64-bit Windows version, people will be able
to start using it regardless of how official it is.

Cheers,
  John

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 11:03:41AM +0100, Ajasja Ljubeti?? wrote:
> I hope this is not to off topic and you won't flame me for this, but is
> there any chance for an official windows 64 bit build of VMD 1.9? It would
> be nice to be able to use more than 4GB for loading trajectories...
> Best regards,
> Ajasja
>
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 02:57, David Joiner <djoiner_at_kean.edu> wrote:
>
> Sounds fun.
>
> Right now I have both MS Visual C++ Express and Cygwin with gcc and
> make installed. Versions are listed below.
>
> Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
> Version 10.0.30319.1 RTMRel
> Microsoft .NET Framework
> Version 4.0.30319 RTMRel
>
> Installed Version: VC Express
>
> bash-3.2$ gcc --version
> gcc (GCC) 4.3.4 20090804 (release) 1
> Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is
> NO
> warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> PURPOSE.
>
> bash-3.2$ make --version
> GNU Make 3.81
> Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
> There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
> PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
>
> This program built for i686-pc-cygwin
> bash-3.2$
>
> Thanks!
> Dave.
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 3:40 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > David,
> > Compiling VMD for windows is quite involved, but if you're
> > doing a CAVE build, there's really no alternative approach.
> > The reason it is complex is because you first have to have all
> > of the library depencies compiled and in-place, then the VMD plugins,
> > and then VMD itself. The other thing to watch out for is that all
> > of the libraries and VMD itself have to be compiled using the same
> > runtime settings in the Microsoft tools, so that you don't have
> > various kinds of DLL conflicts for MSVCRT.DLL, etc.
> >
> > If you're an experienced Windows developer, then none of this is
> > news to you, but most people that ask about Windows compilation
> > don't realize what they are actually getting into... :-)
> >
> > One problem you will have to resolve (I will be happy to try and help
> > as much as possible):
> > We have never compiled VMD with CAVElib support on Windows...
> > Although VMD uses the standard CAVElib routines in most places,
> > it makes extensive use of CAVElib-provided shared memory for storage
> > of its internal scene graph (all of the geometry that gets drawn by
> > the renderer worker processes/threads).
> > I don't know if that functionality is replicated in the Windows
> versions
> > of CAVElib or not. Even if it is, another complication is whether the
> > Windows implementation of CAVElib is done using threads or with
> separate
> > processes. VMD was written when CAVElib was always implemented with
> > separate processes, and since the UIUC CAVEs have always run a
> process-based
> > CAVElib, I don't know if there will be any hidden "gotchas" with
> > unintentionally shared data between worker threads in a Windows
> CAVElib.
> >
> > To start out with, I think you'll have to compile VMD from source on
> Windows,
> > and once you get that far, we can work on whatever CAVElib issues that
> arise
> > after that.
> >
> > To build VMD on windows, you need to use the Cygwin utilities for GNU
> make,
> > but the actual source code compilation is done using the Microsoft
> compilers.
> >
> > If you tell me what compiler versions you have installed, we can
> proceed
> > from there.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 03:12:44PM -0500, David Joiner wrote:
> >> I know this question has been asked before, but as the answer is
> >> usually "Do you really want to do that?" (and the response is usually
> >> "I guess not") I'll ask again.
> >>
> >> How do you compile VMD from source for Windows?
> >>
> >> I ask because I want to compile VMD with CAVElib options to run on a
> >> Windows XP Cave.
> >>
> >> Dave Joiner
> >
> > --
> > NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> > Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> > University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> > Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> > WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
> > 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078