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Slicer Build Instruction Updates

Key Investigators

• Hans Johnson (University of Iowa)
• Cavan Riley (University of Iowa -- Working from Iowa)
• Slicer Core Developers (Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin / Others ??)

Project Description

Update the documentation for Slicer development to describe what should be expected.

Improve Slicer build instructions

Building a custom version of Slicer has become increasingly complex.
- Identify how to install Qt on an ARM-based Apple M4 computer. - Identify how to install Qt on a Ubuntu 24.04 Linux computer.

Objective

1. Improve documentation for new (not expert) developers to understand the environment necessary to build Slicer on Linux (Ubuntu 24.04), Mac (M4 new mac), Windows
2. To prepare Slicer for future versions of ITK, but configuring a stable build environment has been more challenging than expected (primarily regarding Qt 5 requirements)

Strech Goals

1. Stretch Goal – Setup building a large number of extensions to facilitate preparation for ITKv6 C++17 (while maintianing backward compatibility).
2. Investigate the status of moving to Qt6. Provide support/testing environments for migration to Qt6.
3. Investigate updating TCLAP to build cleanly, perhaps update to the latest version of TCLAP.

Approach and Plan

1. Have Cavan follow instructions naively, and update instructions as necessary to get a build environment that allows building of Slicer
2. Find outdated build instructions via Google searching and update/remove documentation.

Progress and Next Steps

1. Downloaded Slicer source code, tried to build on mac M4 computer.

Illustrations

No response

Background and References

The current instructions 2025-06-17 do not work on Arm64-based Mac, primarily due to the inability to instlal qt5 on an Arm64 based mac.

Base Instructions