Compiling BOINC client software

The BOINC client software includes:

• The core client
• The BOINC Manager
• boinc_cmd (Unix/Linux? only)
• The BOINC screensaver (Windows and Mac only)

Linux/x86

If you want to build the client software for local use on your machine only, it is enough to simply build it using

./_autosetup
./configure --disable-server --enable-client CXXFLAGS="-O3 -funroll-loops -fforce-addr -ffast-math"
make

If instead you intend to build portable binaries of the client software that should run on a wide variety of GNU/Linux platforms, it is recommended to build the client software using a virtual machine (e.g. running under Microsoft Virtual PC, download the Compatibility virtual machine image). In this case you should build using

./_autosetup
./configure --disable-server --enable-client-release --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu \
    CXXFLAGS="-O3 -funroll-loops -fforce-addr -ffast-math"
make

See details

The result (in the sea/ directory) will be a self-extracting archive (boinc_x.y.z_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh) containing the BOINC client software.

Other Unix

• Download and install prerequisites
• Download current source code?
• Configure (with --disable_server) and make

The result (in the sea/ directory) will be a self-extracting archive (boinc_x.y.z_PLATFORM.sh) containing the BOINC client software. If you have old versions of libraries (curl, openssl etc.) in /usr/lib, and newer versions somewhere else (like /usr/local/lib) you must tell the linker where to find the newer versions:

./configure LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib

Here is the list of packages that are needed to compile the BOINC graphics libs on Debian (the same packages should also be available on Ubuntu):

freeglut3-dev libsm-dev libice-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev libx11-dev libjpeg62-dev

Windows

Use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Or download and install ​Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition (part of Visual Studio 8 Express).

NOTE: When using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, you will also need to download and install the Windows Platform SDK. See this ​article for further details.

Install version 2.8.4 of ​WxWidgets:

• Download and install the WxWidgets source according to instructions on the web site.
• In Settings/Control? Panel/System?, select Advanced; click Environment Variables. Under 'User variables' click New. Create a variable named 'wxwin' with value 'c:\wx' (or wherever you installed it). Then restart Visual Studio.
• Build WxWidgets. See ​Compiling WxWidgets for details.
• When done, go File->Close Solution.
• Then go File->Open Solution->%drive%:boinc/win_build/boinc.sln and press Open.
• Set up Visual Studio to use the correct platform. From the drop-down menu choose either Win32 (for 32 bit platforms) or x64 (for 64 bit platforms) and choose to make it a Release version.
• Go to the Build menu, Build Solution.

All files will be built to %drive%:boinc/win_build/Build/Win32/Release (or Build/x64/Release for 64 bit versions). Versions compiled with Visual C++ 2005 Express use the optimizing compiler. Benchmarks are the same as on versions released by Berkeley.

TODO: instructions for creating an installer with Installshield X.

Mac OS X

Instructions for building the BOINC client on Mac OS X are here.