vlab

The virtual laboratory

Curently broken and stuck on the libray stuff because it's old code and I do not want to update old pointer arithmitic Plenty of bugs from Gemini in translation probably, but we've made good progress on updating stuff I think.

Developer Getting Started Guide

Note: our current version has been developed using QT 5.15.16.

OSX

You will need to have Xcode Command Line Tools and Qt5 installed. If you do not have Xcode, get it via Terminal with the command:

xcode-select -install 

This should install the command line tools only and not the IDE. Then install Qt: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/gettingstarted.html Because Qt 5.15 support is ending on 26 May, 2025, it is recommended to install Qt via Homebrew (https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/qt@5) or Macports (https://ports.macports.org/port/qt5/).

To compile vlab, go to the source directory and run:

./configure.sh -A {arm64 | x86 | x86_64} -M {macOS version}
./compile_all.sh

After compiling, to make an application bundle, change to the ./Distribution directory and run:

./vlab-macdeployqt.sh

The script will create a vlab-5******.dmg file.

Ubuntu

The supported version of Ubuntu is listed in install_ubuntu_reqs.sh, though other versions may also work. This may require first running: sudo add-apt-repository universe

sudo ./install_ubuntu_reqs.sh
./configure.sh
./compile_all.sh

Fedora

A legacy version of Fedora is listed in install_fedora_reqs.sh. Newer versions were not tested.

Configure script auto-detection seems spotty on Fedora, so you may need to be explicit about being 64-bit, using the -A flag.

sudo ./install_fedora_reqs.sh
./configure.sh -A 64
./compile_all.sh

Windows, using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

On Windows 10 (build 19041 and higher) or Windows 11, you will need to install WSL 2 and a Linux distribution. You can install both at the same time using the Windows Command Prompt (in administator mode):

wsl --install

giving you Ubuntu as the default distribution. Then follow the instructions for compiling vlab for Ubuntu given above.

Version Numbering

The build number and date are stored in two files:

1. libs/misc/version.cpp: there are functions version_major, version_minor, version_minor_minor, build_number, and build_date_string which return the current values.
2. Lstudio/Lstudio.rc: the VS_VERSION_INFO block has the version/build number four times: under keys FILEVERSION and PRODUCTVERSION, then again a few lines later as the argument to VALUE "FileVersion" and VALUE "ProductVersion".

Contact

The home page for vlab is: http://www.algorithmicbotany.org/virtual_laboratory/

Email: vlab.algorithmicbotany@gmail.com

L-studio

L-studio can be compiled on Windows 10/11 using Microsoft Visual Studio. The current source code was tested with Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022 (64-bit) Version 17.14.12. To build, open Distribution.sln in the Distribution folder, select Release and Win32 as the configuration (x64 is not currently supported), and then Build Solution. Ensure that flex and bison are installed and can be run from the command line (https://github.com/lexxmark/winflexbison). To create the distributable zip files, install 7z from https://www.7-zip.org/ and ensure the 7z.exe is accessible from the command line.