From: Josh Vermaas (vermaas2_at_illinois.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 23 2014 - 12:13:23 CDT

Hi Mike,

What were your configure options or the options for make distrib? My
understanding is that the extensions menu items are a compile-time
feature, and if they weren't in place properly during compilation, the
VMD build will happily (try to) work without any extensions. Your .vmdrc
lines may ameliorate the situation somewhat (possibly, I've never tested
this) by providing the facilities so the commands in the terminal, but
it won't change the extensions menu in my experience. This is not the
optimal setup, and if I had to make an educated guess, make distrib
didn't put the plugins where the main program expects them, but this
normally causes the compilation to halt on missing molfiles, so I'm not
sure what the issue is specifically. This is my compile and install
makefile (adapted for not making debian packages) that is placed in the
directory *above* the plugins and the source vmd directory during
compilation. See if this helps at all to sort out what might be missing:

DESTDIR=$(shell pwd)
VMDVER="1.9.2beta1"
#These are the final install locations
PLUGINDIR=/usr/local/lib/vmd/plugins
PLUGINBINDIR=/usr/local/bin
export

all: compileplugins compilevmd

compileplugins:
     cd plugins; make LINUXAMD64 TCLINC=-I/usr/include/tcl8.6
TCLLIB=-L/usr/lib \
     NETCDFLIB=-L/usr/lib NETCDFINC=-I/usr/include/ -j 1 ; make distrib
PLUGINDIR=$(DESTDIR)/vmd-$(VMDVER)/plugins

compilevmd:
     cd vmd-$(VMDVER); \
     ./configure LINUXAMD64 OPENGL FLTK TK ACTC XINERAMA LIBTACHYON
NETCDF TCL PYTHON PTHREADS NUMPY COLVARS CUDA LIBOPTIX ; \
     cd src ; make

installplugins:
     cd plugins ; make distrib

installvmd:
     cd src; make install

install: installplugins installvmd

Now I also needed to make changes within the configure script so VMD
would pick up my system python libraries (and CUDA, and Optix, and
pretty much all of the other libraries), but I think you have already
done this for your own system.

Good luck!
-Josh Vermaas

On 10/23/2014 10:27 AM, Woodson, Michael wrote:
> Hi, I had written in a few days ago about compiling VMD against my
> native python build.
> I thought I had gotten it to work, but I didn't check everything, and
> now notice that the "Extensions" drop-down menu in the "VMD Main"
> window isn't populated; clicking on it just brings down a small empty
> frame.
> I have these lines:
> set auto_path [linsert $auto_path 0 [file join $env(HOME) vmdplugins]]
> and
> vmd_plugin_scandirectory [file join $env(HOME) vmdplugins [vmdinfo
> arch] molfile] *.so
> in my .vmdrc file, and it looks like it is, indeed, executing those
> commands. The ~/vmdplugins/LINUXAMD64/molfile directory has plenty of
> *plugin.so files. So does the directory in the vmd installation directory.
> The other menus are fine, just Extensions.
> Any help figuring this out would be greatly appreciated!
> Mike W.