Step 1:

Open the CMake (cmake-gui) executable, and click on the Browse Source... button in the top right hand corner of the window. Use the file browser popup to locate the Geant4 source directory, and click OK.

Step 2:

Now we create a directory in which to create the Visual Studio project files and hold the build products. This directory should not be the same as, or inside, the the source directory. Here we will create this build directory alongside our source directory.

Click on the Browse Build... button in the top right hand side of the CMake GUI window. Use the file browser popup to browse back to C:\Users\Ben\Documents\geant4\, and click on the Make New Folder button. Rename the created folder to geant4.9.6-build, and click on the OK button. The two text entries at the top of the GUI should now contain C:/Users/Ben/Documents/geant4/geant4.9.6 and C:/Users/Ben/Documents/geant4/geant4.9.6-build respectively (Note: CMake always represents Windows paths with forward slashes).

Step 3:

Click on the Configure button on the bottom left hand side of the GUI.

Step 4:

In the popup window, select Visual Studio 2010. Ensure only the Use default native compilers radio box is checked. Then click on the Finish button.

Step 5:

CMake will then run to check features and provide an initial configuration. All being well, you will see red highlighted entries in the main options window including CMAKE and GEANT4 entries. Note that the red highlighting means CMake has not fully resolved all configuration variables yet, not that has been an error. On Express editions of Visual Studio, you may see a warning about missing system runtime libraries in the logging window at the bottom of the GUI, but this can be ignored for a standard install. Any other errors will be reported in this logging window.

Step 6:

By default, CMake will configure the build to install Geant4 under C:/Program Files/Geant4. If you do not wish to use this directory, or do not have permission to install there, you can change the installation location. Click on the arrow next to the the CMAKE entry in the central options display to expand all CMake specific configuration options. Scroll down to locate the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX entry. Click on the entry and edit the path directly or via the file browser popup. In this example we will modify this install directory to C:/Users/Ben/Documents/geant4/geant4.9.6-install.

If you need to activate extra components of Geant4, click on the expansion arrow next to the GEANT4 entry in the central options display to expand all Geant4 specific configuration options. We will not adjust any here, but they are all documented in Section 2.3. Simply click on the tick box next to an option to select it if you require.

Step 7:

Once you have adjusted any options, click on the Configure button again. After this has finished, all the options listed in the central option display should be white. If you still have entries in red, click Configure to reconfigure until all entries are white.

Step 8:

Now click on the Generate button to generate the Visual Studio project. All being well, CMake will generate the solution files and finally report Configuring done, Generating done in the logging window at the bottom of the GUI. You can now close the CMake GUI.

Step 9:

Now start up Visual Studio, and choose Open Project. This guide is somewhat specific to Visual Studio 2010 Express, but the solutions should appear with the same names in other versions. Browse to your build directory, and open the Geant4.sln Microsoft Visual Studio Solution file. Note that it may take some time to fully configure, open and parse all files in the solution. You may also use the MSBuild command line utility to build the solution directly if you are familiar with that tool, but we do not as yet document or support this.

Step 10:

By default, the Visual Studio solution builds the Debug Configuration, so if you want an optimized build, you should select the Release option from the drop down Solutions Configurations menu in the toolbar (Visual Studio 2010).

Step 11:

In the Solution Explorer, right click on the INSTALL solution, and select Build from the popup menu. The solution will now build and install to the directory you chose for CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX earlier. If you wish to build a different configuration (Release if you built Debug first, for example), then simply change the solution configuration as described in the previous paragraph, and build the INSTALL solution again.

Step 12:

If you see a successful build, you can exit Visual Studio.