One go at installing CV

One go at installing CV, OpenCV wrapper for Haskell

This recipe describes one case on installing CV without using global installation locations. This recipe uses optional tools like stow and cabal-dev.

This was run on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and a decent machine. I already had stuff installed, like the

• build-essential package & dev versions of libraries such as zlib.
• GHC 7.4.1
• cabal-install 0.10.2 using Cabal 1.10.1.0
• cabal-dev 0.9.1 (optional)
• and so on.

On my quite decent box there was 15-20 minutes worth of compiling.

Step 1. OpenCV Installation

Download OpenCV from http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/

and follow good installation instructions at http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide

deggis@Melchior:~$ cd temp

deggis@Melchior:~/temp$ mv /home/deggis/Downloads/OpenCV-2.3.1a.tar.bz2 .
deggis@Melchior:~/temp$ tar jxf OpenCV-2.3.1a.tar.bz2
deggis@Melchior:~/temp$ cd OpenCV-2.3.1/

deggis@Melchior:~/temp/OpenCV-2.3.1$ mkdir release && cd release

deggis@Melchior:~/temp/OpenCV-2.3.1/release$ cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/deggis/usr/local/ ..

It's possible to install to /usr/local as well. However, I like to keep changing things in separate place in my ~/usr/local.

After finding library & include locations CMAKE displays a thorough listing of what is going to be enabled in this build.

deggis@Melchior:~/temp/OpenCV-2.3.1/release$ time make

...
[100%] Building CXX object modules/stitching/CMakeFiles/opencv_stitching.dir/motion_estimators.o
[100%] Building CXX object modules/stitching/CMakeFiles/opencv_stitching.dir/precomp.o
Linking CXX executable ../../bin/opencv_stitching
[100%] Built target opencv_stitching

real    8m5.956s

Success.

deggis@Melchior:~/temp/OpenCV-2.3.1/release$ make install

Step 2. CV Installation

deggis@Melchior:~/projects$ mkdir cv.smoketest && cd cv.smoketest
deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ cabal-dev 
deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ time cabal-dev install CV --extra-lib-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/lib --extra-include-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/include

There's some packages depending on each other. Few minutes pass as armful of libraries are installing.

Oh bugger!

/home/deggis/projects/cv.smoketest/cabal-dev//lib/vector-0.9.1/ghc-7.4.1
cabal: The program c2hs version >=0.16.0 is required but it could not be
found.
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
CV-0.3.4 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1

real    3m8.857s

Here's a current issue. Compiling CV requires additional build tools, but they aren't fetched automatically. Let's install them manually.

I guess I'm going to be needing those often, so I'll install them without cabal-dev to my ~/.cabal/bin. With cabal-dev you should add current ./cabal-dev/bin to $PATH.

deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ time cabal install happy alex c2hs

[26 of 26] Compiling Main             ( src/Main.hs, dist/build/c2hs/c2hs-tmp/Main.p_o )
Linking dist/build/c2hs/c2hs ...
Installing executable(s) in /home/deggis/.cabal/bin
Updating documentation index /home/deggis/.cabal/share/doc/index.html

real    2m18.676s

Let's try again.

deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ time cabal-dev install CV --extra-lib-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/lib --extra-include-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/include

c2hs: C header contains errors:

dist/build/CV/Video.chs.h:24: (column 32) [ERROR]  >>> Unknown identifier!
Cannot find a definition for `CV_CAP_PROP_WHITE_BALANCE' in the header file.

cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
CV-0.3.4 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1

real  0m6.984s

Uh, it turns out there was two things missing. Between OpenCV 2.2 and 2.3 there has been a changed #define and currently you need to specify opencv version with -fopencv23.

There's a ticket https://github.com/aleator/CV/issues/10 covering that issue now.

Also, when facing problems, cabal update (or checking out a dev version) might fix things.

deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ cabal update
Downloading the latest package list from hackage.haskell.org

Let's try one more time.

deggis@Melchior:~/projects/cv.smoketest$ time cabal-dev install CV --extra-lib-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/lib --extra-include-dirs=/home/deggis/usr/local/include -fopencv23
Installing library in
/home/deggis/projects/cv.smoketest/cabal-dev//lib/CV-0.3.5.3/ghc-7.4.1
Registering CV-0.3.5.3...

real    1m7.424s

Yeehaw! It seems cabal update also upgraded CV version from 0.3.4 to 0.3.5.3, which is also GHC 7.4.1 compatible.