Compiling on Linux and Mac OS X

These instructions are inteded to help users to build Avogadro from the latest code. Be aware that Avogadro may fail to build or work properly at any given time when built using the instructions below. For the adventurous, there are also Windows Visual Studio 2008 instructions.

Generally, users should first try the binary installers or packages available on the download page, made using a released version of Avogadro.

Developers may want to use the instructions found at Building:Development_Version.

Dependencies

Subversion

CMake (>=2.4.5)

Qt4 (>=4.4.0)

Eigen (>=2.0_beta3)

OpenBabel (>=2.2.0)

It is likely that Subversion, Git, CMake and Qt4 will be available from your distribution's repositories, or in binary form on the Mac.

Installing Eigen

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kdesupport/eigen2
cd eigen2
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
sudo make install

Building Open Babel

Avogadro makes heavy use of code and features from the Open Babel chemistry toolbox. To ensure you have the latest Open Babel code you should build it from the code repository. It is sufficient to use OpenBabel 2.2.0 or more recent:

svn co https://openbabel.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/openbabel/openbabel/trunk openbabel
cd openbabel
./configure 
make
make install # must be run as root or with sudo

Building Avogadro

Avogadro's version control system is now Git, with hosting provided by GitHub. If you would rather not install Git it is possible to download a tar or zip file containing the latest sources from here by clicking on the download link. Generally you will want to clone the git repository,

git clone git://github.com/cryos/avogadro.git
cd avogadro
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j3
sudo make install

Running

avogadro

On Mac OS X Avogadro will be in your Applications folder.