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Slicer Build Instruction Updates

Key Investigators

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

Project Description

Update the documentation for Slicer development to describe what should be expected. Provide expanded guidance for how to identify and work through common issues that arise in different environments.

Improve Slicer build instructions

Building a custom version of Slicer has become increasingly complex.
- Identify how to install Qt 6 on an ARM-based Apple M4 computer. - Identify how to install Qt 6 on a Ubuntu 24.04 Linux computer. - Identify how to install Qt 6 on a Debian 12 Bookworm 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).
3. Update BRAINSTools support in Slicer
4. Have Slicer build succesfully with CMake 4.0
5. Update SlicerBuildEnvironment instructions to configure, build and package Slicer for Linux.

Strech Goals

1. Stretch Goal – Setup building a large number of extensions to facilitate preparation for ITKv6 C++17 (while maintaining backward compatibility).
2. Investigate updating TCLAP to build cleanly, perhaps update to the latest version of TCLAP.
3. Investigate the status of moving to Qt6. Provide support/testing environments for migration to Qt6. https://projectweek.na-mic.org/PW43_2025_Montreal/Projects/TransitionSlicerDefaultBuildFromQt5ToQt6/

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 Find outdated build instructions via Google searching and update/remove documentation.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.
2. Updates to allow for building with CMake 4+ https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/pull/8491

# Install older version of cmake with homebrew on mac
brew uninstall cmake
# Find and download the formula for the cmake version you wish to install 
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/1976f46fc84ea7716722a067c0dcffb072a38388/Formu
la/c/cmake.rb
brew install ./cmake.rb

Background and References

The current instructions 2025-06-17 do not work on Arm64-based Mac, primarily due to the inability to install Qt5 on an Arm64 based mac.

Base Instructions