compilation of vtk with python wrapper

Question

I'm trying to build the VTK library with python wrappers. I want to develop a python program to post-process some CFD results in VTK format.

I'm compiling the source in a local folder.

Unfortunately I'm facing several issues: firstly during the compilation I get the following error message:

CMake Error at Common/Core/cmake_install.cmake:47 (file):
file INSTALL cannot find
"/home/riccardo/Software/VTK/build/lib/libvtkCommonCore-8.0.so.1".

I tried to disable the option of shared libraries as suggested here VTK install error cannot find libvtkCommonCore-6.3.so.1 in the cmake configuration

cmake ..\
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/riccardo/Software/VTK/build \
  -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=OFF \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DVTK_USE_SYSTEM_ZLIB:BOOL=ON

In this case the compilation went fine but when I tried to import vtk in python I get this error:

from .vtkCommonCore import *
 42 from .vtkCommonMath import *
 43 from .vtkCommonMisc import *

 ~/Software/VTK/build/Wrapping/Python/vtk/vtkCommonCore.py in <module>()
    7     # during build and testing, the modules will be elsewhere,
    8     # e.g. in lib directory or Release/Debug config directories
---->   9     from vtkCommonCorePython import *

    ImportError: No module named 'vtkCommonCorePython'   

I really don't know how to fix it. Any help would be more than welcome.

Many thanks in advance!!!

Answer 1

Have you tried to tell CMake the python version you want to wrap?

That is, add:

-D VTK_WRAP_PYTHON:BOOL=ON \
-D VTK_PYTHON_VERSION:STRING=3.5 # or your python version
-D PYTHON_EXECUTABLE:PATH=\usr\bin\python3 # or wherever your python exec is

In the CMake configuration and see what happens.