PicoGK on LINUX

[LinKayser]

As I said in another thread, I have no immediate plans to also officially support LINUX (I really do not have any decent way to test it).

But I have set up a Docker environment that (at least on my Mac) successfully compiles PicoGK on LINUX. You can find it in the Misc folder of the PicoGKRuntime project.

To build the Docker environment, open up a command line in the Misc subfolder, and run:

docker build -t picogk2 .

(you can choose any name, picogk2 is just for your reference — don't forget the . at the end of the command to reference the local folder)

After building the environment, you can mount it like this:

docker run -it --rm -v /Users/yourusername/GitHub/PicoGKRuntime:/src picogk2:latest bash

Make sure you replace the path to wherever your PicoGKRuntime repo is located locally.

If successful, you will now end up inside the Docker environment in the /src directory, which points to the PicoGKRuntime directory outside the Docker container.

You can now configure using CMake. First create a build directory.

mkdir build_on_linux
cd build_on_linux

Then configure the build environment using cmake and build it using make.

cmake ..
make

This should work. Again, I have not tested the compiled result, but it does compile.

Best,
Lin

Dockerfile attached for your reference:

FROM gcc:15

# 1) Core build tools
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    cmake \
    build-essential \
    wget \
    git \
    tar \
    bzip2 \
    python3 \
    pkg-config \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# 2) Install Boost and TBB (avoid problematic extras)
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    libboost-all-dev --no-install-recommends \
    libtbb-dev \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# 3) Install Blosc (either Blosc2 or original Blosc)
RUN git clone https://github.com/Blosc/c-blosc.git /opt/blosc \
 && cd /opt/blosc \
 && mkdir build && cd build \
 && cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local .. \
 && cmake --build . --target install

# 4) GLFW/ImGui/OpenGL/Wayland/X11 support
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    libwayland-dev \
    libxkbcommon-dev \
    wayland-protocols \
    extra-cmake-modules \
    xorg-dev \
    mesa-common-dev \
    libgl1-mesa-dev \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

WORKDIR /src

[madscientist42]

Confirming that this seems to largely work on the latest Linux Mint. I'm sure it will work with most distros with tweakage.

[KunalSin9h]

I am on .net v9.

hey, it working when i am downloading picogk 1.7 nuget version.

@LinKayser can you guide me why this is not working on picogk 2.0 nuget version.

[LinKayser]

Not sure why it would work at all, as the Nuget doesn't include a LINUX build. If you want to run on LINUX, you have to compile yourself. Maybe it finds a local compilation on your system by accident?

[madscientist42]

It probably does just that Lin. What I have to do is hand copy over a few things into right places. I'm not at the machine that I succeeded at this with right now (Long story...won't bore people with the details...)- but as soon as I get back, I can help out there (For all of my being "gritchy" about some of this- I do really want to help here so more can use this). Ultimately we probably want to document what needs to be done and provide maybe some helper scripting to round it out. It was...surprisingly simple and easy...once I had time to figure out what was off on the the missing parts.

[madscientist42]

I got both viewer and headless working on my machine cleanly with just a couple of hand-compile steps and a couple of copies into the .Net cache area on my machine.

[LinKayser]

Yes, if you hand-copy the self-compiled runtime to the correct places bin/Debug/net9.0/runtimes ... etc. then it should work fine.

Again, would love to support it, but we have no bandwidth. We are on Mac, and even supporting Windows is already annoying enough.

If someone wants to volunteer...

Cheers,
Lin

[michaelp91-dev]

If anyone wants to run PicoGK leveraging Google Colab's runtime you can use this:
https://github.com/michaelp91-dev/PicoGK-Colab

This runs PicoGK in headless mode and generates an STL file.

Colab runs on Ubuntu. If you'd like to compile and run PicoGK on your own Ubuntu, I've done it this way:

https://github.com/michaelp91-dev/PicoGK-Colab?tab=readme-ov-file
sudo chmod +x PicoGKRuntime/Install_Dependencies/colab.sh
./PicoGKRuntime/Install_Dependencies/colab.sh
cd PicoGKRuntime
rm -rf build
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

[HobbitTheCat]

Sharing my experience: Successfully running PicoGK on NixOS

Hi everyone! I noticed some discussions about running PicoGK on Linux. I recently managed to get it working on NixOS (running Hyprland) and wanted to share the steps that worked for me, as the standard Docker/pre-build approach had some issues in my environment.

The Challenges I Faced

Initially, I ran into System.DllNotFoundException. The runtime couldn't find picogk.1.7 or its dependencies (like libtbb.so.12), even when the libraries were present.

Additionally, if you try to use the bundled GLFW, you might see:

Creating Viewer
GLFW initialization failed
GL Callback Error: The GLFW library is not initialized

This usually happens because the bundled GLFW doesn't play well with NixOS graphics drivers.

My Solution

1. Creating a Native Nix Environment

Instead of Docker, I used a shell.nix to provide all necessary dependencies during the build.

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:

pkgs.mkShell {
  nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs; [
    cmake
    pkg-config
    wayland-scanner.dev
    gcc
  ];

  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    boost
    c-blosc
    onetbb
    zlib

    wayland
    wayland-protocols
    libxkbcommon.dev
    libGL
    libGLU
    glfw

    xorg.libX11
    xorg.libXrandr
    xorg.libXinerama
    xorg.libXcursor
    xorg.libXi
    xorg.libXext
    xorg.libXrender
  ];

  CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH = with pkgs; [
    wayland-protocols
    wayland-scanner
  ];
}

2. Tweaking build process

To fix GLFW errors, I decided to use the system-provided GLFW instead of the bundled one.
I modified CMakeLists.txt in the root of PicoGKRuntime:

• I commented out: # add_subdirectory( ${PICOGK_ROOT_DIR}/GLFW EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL )
• I added: find_package(glfw3 REQUIRED)
  Then I built the project inside the nix-shell:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

3. Handling .NET Library Lookup

After the build, I noticed .NET was very specific about the filenames it was looking for. I solved this by creating a few symbolic links in my project folder. I'm not sure if all of them are strictly necessary, but creating these four made the errors go away:

ln -sf picogk.so picogk.1.7
ln -sf picogk.so libpicogk.1.7
ln -sf picogk.so picogk.1.7.so
ln -sf picogk.so libpicogk.1.7.so

Result

After these steps, the viewer launched perfectly on Hyprland. If you are on NixOS or another distro facing similar library "loops," I hope this experience helps you save some time!