There are a number of optional and required dependencies necessary when building different components of OpenVDB. Below you'll find a full list of all dependencies, any minimum/recommended version requirements and some guides for getting these dependencies installed. You'll also find information on any known issues with particular software. Please report any issues not listed here to the OpenVDB TSC.

Note that OpenVDB is production tested against the VFX Reference Platform. Not all dependencies exist in the VFX Reference Platform, but for those that do, their specified versions are always recommended.

OpenVDB Components

Component	Requirements	Optional
OpenVDB Core Library	CMake, C++17 compiler, TBB::tbb	Blosc, ZLib, Log4cplus, Imath::Imath, Boost::iostream
OpenVDB Print	Core Library dependencies	-
OpenVDB LOD	Core Library dependencies	-
OpenVDB Render	Core Library dependencies	OpenEXR, Imath::Imath, libpng
OpenVDB View	Core Library dependencies, OpenGL, GLFW3, GLEW*	-
OpenVDB Python	Core Library dependencies, Python, nanobind	NumPy
OpenVDB AX	Core Library dependencies, LLVM	Bison, Flex
NanoVDB	-	Core Library, CUDA, TBB, Blosc, ZLib
OpenVDB UnitTests	Core Library dependencies, GoogleTest	CppUnit**
OpenVDB Documentation	Doxygen	-

* GLEW is only required for building the vdb_view binary on Windows.
** CppUnit is only required for building the AX unit tests.
Note - Bison and Flex are only required for re-generation of the AX grammar which is not typically necessary for the majority of users.

Dependency Table

Package	Minimum	Recommended	Description	apt-get	Homebrew	Source
CMake	3.20	Latest	Cross-platform family of tools designed to help build software	Y	Y	https://cmake.org
GCC	11.2.1	11.2.1	C++ 17 Compiler: The GNU Compiler Collection	Y	Y	https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc
Clang	5.0	Latest	C++ 17 Compiler: A C language family frontend for LLVM	Y	Y	https://clang.llvm.org
Intel ICC	19	Latest	C++ 17 Compiler: Intels C++ Compiler	Y	Y	https://software.intel.com/en-us/c-compilers
MSVC	19.30	19.30	C++ 17 Compiler: Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler	Y	Y	https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs
Imath	3.1	Latest	Half precision floating points	Y	Y	http://www.openexr.com
OpenEXR	3.1	Latest	EXR serialization support	Y	Y	http://www.openexr.com
TBB	2020.3	2020.3	Threading Building Blocks - template library for task parallelism	Y	Y	https://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org
ZLIB	1.2.7	Latest	Compression library for disk serialization compression	Y	Y	https://www.zlib.net
Boost	1.80	1.82	Components: iostreams	Y	Y	https://www.boost.org
LLVM	13.0.0	15.0.0*	Target-independent code generation	Y	Y	https://llvm.org/
Bison	3.7.0	3.7.0	General-purpose parser generator	Y	Y	https://www.gnu.org/software/gcc
Flex	2.6.4	2.6.4	Fast lexical analyzer generator	Y	Y	https://github.com/westes/flex
Python	3.10	3.11	The python interpreter and libraries	Y	Y	https://www.python.org
nanobind	2.0.0	2.1.0	C++/python bindings	Y	Y	https://nanobind.readthedocs.io
NumPy	1.23.0	1.26.0	Scientific computing with Python	Y	Y	http://www.numpy.org
GoogleTest	1.10	Latest	A unit testing framework module for C++	Y	Y	https://github.com/google/googletest
CppUnit	1.10	Latest	A unit testing framework module for C++	N	Y	https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/cppunit
Blosc	1.17.0*	1.17.0	Recommended dependency for improved disk compression	Y	Y	https://github.com/Blosc/c-blosc/releases
Log4cplus	1.1.2	Latest	An optional dependency for improved OpenVDB Logging	Y	Y	https://github.com/log4cplus/log4cplus
libpng	-	Latest	Library for manipulating PNG images	Y	Y	http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
GLFW	3.1	> 3.3	Simple API for OpenGL development	Y	Y	https://www.glfw.org
OpenGL	3.2	Latest	Environment for developing portable graphics applications	Y	Y	https://www.opengl.org
GLEW	1.0.0	Latest	A cross-platform OpenGL extension loading library.	Y	Y	http://glew.sourceforge.net
CUDA	-	Latest	Parallel computing platform for graphical processing units.	Y	N	https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads
Doxygen	1.8.8	1.8.11	Documentation generation from C++	Y	Y	http://www.doxygen.nl

* See the note in known issues regarding supported blosc/llvm versions.

Known Issues

LLVM >= 15. LLVM has recently changed their IR pointer data types to be completely opaque. Some support is provided in LLVM 15 but tests with AX show that this is extremely unstable. AX currently only supports LLVM versions up until 14.X.X. See https://llvm.org/docs/OpaquePointers.html for more details.
GLFW: Crash with GLFW 3.2.1 when used with EGL on Linux. OpenVDB View may segfault on closure. Fixed in GLFW 3.3
Blosc: OpenVDB has historically used an old version of blosc (1.5.0) to serialize .vdb files. OpenVDB has moved to a new blosc version minimum of 1.17.0. We have tested a range of blosc versions and found that the following versions are NOT compatible with OpenVDB caches written using blosc 1.5.0. Additionally these versions of blosc may generally not be compatible with OpenVDB itself. Avoid using these versions and upgrade to the new minimum of 1.17.0 where possible.
All versions from 1.11.0 through to, but excluding, 1.14.0.
Versions 1.16.0 and 1.16.1.

For more information see:

Installing Dependencies

This section details a number of ways to get you up and running with the required OpenVDB dependencies.

Using UNIX apt-get

You can use apt to automatically install required packages. Note that different Ubuntu distributions will have different versions available. You can use apt pinning to request newer versions of specific package from later distributions if the required version isn't available by default (see man apt_preferences). For example, the below settings will request TBB specifically from Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy).

 Package: libtbb-dev
 Pin: release n=jammy
 Pin-Priority: 990

Alternatively you can install any missing dependencies manually or through other package managers.

 #!/bin/bash
 # Core library
 apt-get install cmake                   # CMake
 apt-get install libtbb-dev              # TBB
 apt-get install zlibc                   # zlib
 apt-get install libboost-iostreams-dev  # Boost::iostream
 apt-get install libblosc-dev            # Blosc
 # AX
 apt-get install llvm-15-dev             # LLVM
 # Python
 apt-get install python-dev              # Python
 apt-get install python-numpy            # NumPy
 pip install nanobind                    # nanobind
 # Optional
 apt-get install libpng-dev              # libpng
 apt-get install libopenexr-dev          # OpenEXR
 apt-get install liblog4cplus-dev        # Log4cplus
 apt-get install googletest              # GoogleTest
 apt-get install libcppunit-dev          # CppUnit
 # vdb_view
 apt-get install libglfw3-dev            # GLFW
 # Documentation
 apt-get install doxygen                 # doxygen
 # CUDA for NanoVDB
 apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit     # CUDA

Using Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for UNIX systems and is an alternative to apt-get or manual installation from source.

 #!/bin/bash
 # Core library
 brew install cmake                     # CMake
 brew install tbb                       # TBB
 brew install zlib                      # zlib
 brew install boost                     # Boost
 brew install c-blosc                   # blosc
 # AX
 brew install llvm                      # LLVM
 # Python
 brew install python                    # Python
 brew install numpy                     # NumPy
 brew install nanobind                  # nanobind
 # Unit Tests
 brew install gtest                     # GoogleTest
 brew install cppunit                   # CppUnit
 # vdb_view
 brew install glfw                      # GLFW
 # vdb_render
 brew install openexr                   # OpenEXR
 brew install libpng                    # libpng
 # Documentation
 brew install doxygen                   # Doxygen