Help with Avogadro Build Issues on Windows

Development
1

Hi everyone,

I’m interested in contributing to Avogadro as part of GSoC 2025.
However, I’m facing issues while building the project on Windows. I initially started with Qt Creator and later tried Visual Studio, but I found multiple build guides with conflicting or duplicate information:

Some guides list certain libraries as required, while others mark them as optional, making it unclear which dependencies and steps are necessary for a successful build. Additionally, I noticed that some links in these pages are broken.

Could someone clarify the recommended approach for building Avogadro on Windows? Which guide should I follow, and are there any recent updates or best practices?

Additionally, I’d like to ask if OpenChemistry will be participating in GSoC 2025 and if the “Biological Data Visualization” will be included this year. It looks like a great opportunity, and I’d love to contribute!

Looking forward to contributing and learning from the community.
@ghutchis

Thanks in advance for your help!

2

Hi and welcome!

The first link of your list is the current build guide. :slight_smile:

I did my best to get it up-to-date and accurate a few months back. Happy to clarify anything that’s unclear. If anything is out-of-date, I’d like to update it, so let me know. If, while following the current instructions, there are any issues you encounter, let us know, and hopefully we can help! (And if you find solutions or workarounds to anything, also let us know so I or someone else can add it to the guide!)

Windows as an OS is very important for the project as so many people use it, but tends to be a bit of a blind spot during development, and compiling Avogadro on Windows is sometimes a bit tricky, so really any feedback is useful.

1 Like
3

Got it! much appreciated!
Following up
I managed to build Avogadro using the following CMake configuration:

cmake -DQT_VERSION=6 ^
  -DBUILD_MOLEQUEUE=OFF ^
  -G "Ninja" ^
  -DQt6_DIR="E:\Qt\6.8.2\msvc2022_64\lib/cmake/Qt6" ^
  -DCMAKE_MAKE_PROGRAM="C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/BuildTools/Common7/IDE/CommonExtensions/Microsoft/CMake/Ninja/ninja.exe" ^
  -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2022/BuildTools/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.43.34808/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe" ^
  -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="E:\Qt\6.8.2\msvc2022_64\lib/cmake/Qt6;E:/Qt/6.8.2/msvc2022_64/lib/cmake" ^
  -DQT_ADDITIONAL_PACKAGES_PREFIX_PATH="E:\Qt\6.8.2\msvc2022_64" ^
  -S E:/mohamed/openchemistry -B ./build

Then, I ran ninja to build, but I encountered the following error related to libarchive:

FAILED: libarchive/CMakeFiles/archive_static.dir/archive_read_support_format_rar.c.obj

E:\mohamed\openchemistry\build\thirdparty\libarchive-src\libarchive\archive_read_support_format_rar.c(2806): 
error C2220: the following warning is treated as an error

E:\mohamed\openchemistry\build\thirdparty\libarchive-src\libarchive\archive_read_support_format_rar.c(2806): 
warning C4334: '<<': result of 32-bit shift implicitly converted to 64 bits (was 64-bit shift intended?)

ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

It seems that a warning (C4334) about bit shifting is being treated as an error (C2220), causing the build to fail.

Should I modify the build flags to disable treating warnings as errors, or is there a better fix?

4

That’s great, but as I say every single year, there is no guarantee that Avogadro or Open Chemistry will be a part of GSoC 2025.

No. You’re looking at a project list from 2020. Cartoons, etc. have already been included from previous GSoC projects.