Compiling the Point Cloud Library
=================================

The Point Cloud Library (PCL) can be compiled and used separate from ROS. This
is currently an unstable feature and requires a little patience.


Compiling from the distribution tarball
---------------------------------------

The tarball is designed for compiling on systems that do not have ROS
installed. A number of dependencies must be installed first.

- Intel's TBB library.
- The ANN library.
- The FLANN library.
- The cminpack library.

1. Extract the tarball.

tar -xvzf pcl-<version>.tar.gz /tmp

2. Change to the extracted library directory.

cd /tmp/pcl-<version>

3. Make a build directory and enter it.

mkdir build
cd build/

4. Run CMake. You must specify the locations in which ANN and cminpack are
installed.

cmake -DANN_PREFIX=/usr/local -DCMINPACK_PREFIX=/usr/local ../

5. Run make install to compile and install PCL.

make install


Compiling from subversion trunk
-------------------------------

The trunk is oriented towards compiling within ROS. You will first need to make
a dist tarball, then extract and build it.

1. Change to the pcl directory.

cd pcl/

2. Make a distribution tarball.

./make_tarball

3. Continue with the instructions above for compiling from tarball.

