Setup On Linux#

Development Environment#

Caution

Building Basilisk on Linux using Intel processors is being regularly tested. With Basilisk version 2.1.5 we added experimental support for Linux on ARM processors. However, this option is not regularly tested.

Note

Depending on your system setup, administrative permissions (sudo or su) may be required to install these dependencies. Some distributions of Linux will use other package management commands such as yum, dnf, of pgk.

On a new Linux (assuming Ubuntu 24.04) system various developer packages and support libraries are required

apt-get update
apt-get install git
apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install pkgconf
apt-get install python3
apt-get install python3-dev
apt-get install python3-pip
apt-get install python3-setuptools
apt-get install python3-tk
apt-get install swig
python3 --version

Python virtual environment with same version as Python. For example, python3.9-venv for python3.9.x

apt-get install python3.x-venv

A C/C++ Compiler: This is included by default with most Linux systems (gcc), but is necessary to build Basilisk.

Basilisk uses vcpkg for managing build dependencies

Carry out steps 1-3 detailed in the vcpkg documentation

Setting up Python#

Using a Python Virtual Environment

Attention

We strongly recommend using a python virtual environment while installing basilisk or running basilisk modules. For more info, read this. The virtual environment facilitates installing packages specific to this environment such that they won’t interfere with other python projects.

The following steps show how to create, activate and deactivate a virtual environment. The remaining installation steps work regardless if done within a virtual environment or not.

Create a virtual environment:

cd <your-path-to-basilisk>/basilisk
python3 -m venv .venv

This creates a hidden folder named .venv inside the basilisk folder which stores all python packages and environment information.

Activate the virtual environment when building or running Basilisk:

source .venv/bin/activate

After executing this step you will notice “(.venv)” prepended to your command prompt.

Deactivate the virtual environment to return to the normal command line environment:

deactivate

CMake: You can install cmake using pip3. This makes it easy to overcome limitations of which version of cmake the apt-get command provides

pip3 install cmake

Build The Project#

When all the prerequisite installations are complete, the project can be built as follows

cd src
cmake --preset base
cmake --build ../dist3

The project defines three CMake presets;

  • base - Debug build profile with visualization dependencies

  • full - Everything in “base” with OpNav dependencies

  • ci-test - Everything in “full” with Release build profile. Simulation execution is faster with a Release build

profile.

To view the complete definition of these presets see the presets file in src/CMakePresets.json.

CMake presets are predefined configurations stored in JSON files (CMakePresets.json and CMakeUserPresets.json) that specify build settings such as generators, build directories, and cache variables. Presets streamline project setup by allowing consistent, shareable, and repeatable builds across teams and environments without requiring complex command-line arguments. One can configure additional project CMake build parameters in a custom CMakeUserPresets.json.

To clean a build

cmake --build ../dist3 --target clean

To clean and then build

cmake --build ../dist3 --clean-first

To test your setup you can run one of the examples

python3 basilisk/examples/scenarioBasicOrbit.py