================================ The Vector SIL Kit

The Vector SIL Kit is an open-source library for connecting Software-in-the-Loop Environments. This README is intended to provide you with quick start on how to build the Vector SIL Kit.

For documentation on using the Vector SIL Kit, see the html documentation, which can be generated when building the Vector SIL Kit (cf. Customizing the Build) and is provided in pre-built form with the SIL Kit packages.

The SIL Kit source and documentation is licensed under a permissable open source license, see LICENSE file. For licenses of third party dependencies, see ThirdParty/LICENSES.rst.

Getting Started - GIT Clone

This section specifies the necessary steps to build the SIL Kit if you have just cloned the repository.

1. Fetch Third Party Software

The first thing that you should do is initializing the submodules to fetch the
required third party software::

    git submodule update --init --recursive


2. Generate a Project

The SIL Kit uses CMake for its build system. CMake can generate a platform specific project, e.g., a Visual Studio solution or Linux make files. To generate a project using the default project generator, create a build directory and configure cmake::

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..

3. Customize the Build

It is often helpful to specify a directory where the build should be
installed. With cmake, this can be configured via the variable
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. E.g., to installed the SIL Kit into a folder
called "install" next to the build folder, run cmake as follows::

    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install ..

There are also specific options to toggle details of the build:

    1. SILKIT_BUILD_DOCS=ON (default: OFF) generates html documentation using
       Doxygen and Sphinx. Both must be installed beforehand. Sphinx is a Python
       program that can be installed via pip, e.g. with
       `pip3 install -r SilKit/ci/docker/docs_requirements.txt`

    2. SILKIT_BUILD_TESTS=OFF (default: ON) disables the generation of unit and
       integration tests. The tests are based on the google test framework,
       which is bundled with the SIL Kit.

    3. SILKIT_BUILD_DEMOS=OFF (default: ON) disables the generation of demo
       applications for the SIL Kit.

    4. SILKIT_BUILD_UTILITIES=OFF (default: ON) disables the generation of utility tools
       (registry, system controller and system monitor).

E.g., if you want to build the SIL Kit with documentation enabled,
call cmake in your build directory as follows::
       
    cmake -DSILKIT_BUILD_DOCS=ON ..
    cmake --build . --target Doxygen

4. Build the Vector SIL Kit

Once the project has been generated, you can build the SIL Kit using the project specific tools, e.g., by opening the generated Visual Studio or by running gnu make. You can also start the build process using CMake in a platform independent way::

cmake --build .

To install the SIL Kit to a previously configured location, run::

cmake --build . --target install