Building from source

Building software can be tricky, but hopefully this won’t be - thanks to Gradle.

The following instructions assume:

  • You’re starting from scratch
  • You’re not an expert in building software

If you are an expert, you’ll know which steps you can skip or amend.

Do you need this?!

Most people using QuPath won’t need to build QuPath from source! Just download an existing installer from qupath.github.io and use that instead.

Step 1: Installing prerequisites

Install a Java Development Kit (JDK)

QuPath requires OpenJDK 14 (or later). Typically, the latest stable JDK is used. There are a few places where you can find pre-built OpenJDK binaries - a popular source is AdoptOpenJDK.

Tip

During installation you may be asked if you want to add the JDK to your PATH. It usually makes things easier if you do.

If you can’t (e.g. because of some other Java software needing the PATH set to something else) I’m afraid I’ll leave resolving that up to you.

Step 2: Get the QuPath source code

You can get the QuPath source code from QuPath’s GitHub repository.

If you’re using either Mac or Windows, the following steps may help.

../../_images/building-clone.png

Note for Linux-users

At the time of writing GitHub Desktop is not available through the above link for Linux. Therefore you’ll need another desktop client, or handle Git from the command line.

Step 3: Build QuPath with Gradle

Open the QuPath source directory in a command prompt

One way to do this is to go back to GitHub Desktop and choose Repository ‣ Open in Command Prompt.

Installing Git or not?

At this point you may be asked if you want to install Git.

You don’t have to (I think…), but if you do then you’ll be ask a lot of questions during the installation. One of them is to choose a text editor, where you can select Atom.

Run gradlew

At the command prompt, type the following:

gradlew clean build createPackage

for Windows, or

./gradlew clean build createPackage

for MacOS and Linux.

This will download Gradle and all its dependencies, so may take a bit of time (and an internet connection) the first time you run it.

If all goes well, you should see a triumphant message that the build was successful.

../../_images/building-success.png

Afterwards, you should find QuPath inside the ./build/dist subdirectory. You may then drag it to a more convenient location.

Congratulations! You’ve now built QuPath, and can run it as normal from now on… at least until there is another update, when you can repeat the (hopefully painless) process.

Extras

Variations & troubleshooting

The code above should create everything you need to run QuPath.

If you want an installer instead, you can use

gradlew createPackage -Ptype=installer

Note that for this to work you’ll need to install WIX Toolset.

Inevitably, things will go wrong at some point. When this happens, it’s worth running

gradlew clean

once or twice extra to clean up old files that could be causing trouble.

Getting the latest updates

Once you’ve built QuPath once, updating it to use the latest source code should be much easier.

In GitHub Desktop, see the right-most button on the main toolbar. This serves two purposes: to Fetch information about the latest changes (from GitHub) and to Pull the changes down to your computer.

../../_images/building-branches.png

If the option is Fetch origin, and you press the button then if there are any changes to pull the text on the button will switch to Pull origin with info about the number of changes available.

You can press it again to pull those changes, and then rebuild QuPath using gradlew if necessary.

../../_images/building-pull.png

You can also use the middle button in GitHub Desktop to switch ‘branches’. Branches basically make it possible to have different versions of the code in development in parallel.

The following screenshot shows QuPath where I have checked out a branch called ‘pete-m5’.

../../_images/building-branches-m5.png

If the changes prove worthwhile, the changes in ‘pete-m5’ will be merged into the ‘master’ branch.

Running from an IDE

You should be able to import QuPath into any IDE (e.g. eclipse, IntelliJ) that supports Gradle.

I personally use eclipse for QuPath development, which allows me to run the software in debug mode - and even change the code while it is running.

To do this, I use Run ‣ Debug As ‣ QuPath.

To make this option available, you’ll first need to create a debug configuration with Run ‣ Debug Configurations….

Within this dialog, I use the following options to control the available memory and set the working directory/Java library path.

../../_images/building-eclipse-1.png
../../_images/building-eclipse-2.png

The purpose of setting the Working directory is to pick up the native libraries (e.g. for OpenSlide) when running from the IDE. This requires that the code has been built using gradlew at least once to move the files into position.

Building javadocs

To generate javadocs for the source code, use

gradlew mergedJavadocs

This will generate html javadocs in a ./build/merged-docs subdirectory.

If you’d like to include external links to other relevant javadocs (e.g. for the JDK, ImageJ, JTS) use

gradlew mergedJavadocs -PlinkJavadoc=true