Configure, build, and install PLplot from source
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## Configure, build, and install PLplot from source

After the source code for PLplot has been obtained the generic steps to configure, build, and install PLplot are as follows:

- Optionally set environment variables to force CMake's find commands to locate any of PLplot's software dependencies that are installed in non-standard locations. See the CMake documentation for the `find_file` and `find_library` commands for the list of such variables which includes `CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH`, `CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH`, and `PATH`. In addition, the `PKG_CONFIG_PATH` environment variable forces CMake to find certain software packages which specify their (non-standard) install locations using `pkg-config`.

- Optionally set environment variables that force CMake to use specific compilers to override the (normally good) default choice of compilers that CMake uses. The environment variables that CMake recognizes for this purpose are `ADA` to specify the Ada compiler, `CC` to specify the C compiler, `CXX` to specify the C++ compiler, `DC` to specify the D compiler, and `FC` to specify the Fortran compiler.

- Optionally set environment variables that force CMake to use specific compiler flags. The environment variables that CMake recognizes for this purpose are `ADAFLAGS` to specify the Ada compiler flags, `CCFLAGS` to specify the C compiler flags, `CXXFLAGS` to specify the C++ compiler flags, `DFLAGS` to specify the D compiler flags, and `FFLAGS` to specify the Fortran compiler flags.

- Prepare for running the `cmake` command by removing the stale PLplot install tree (if it exists) that corresponds to the `-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX` option for the `cmake` command (see below), creating an empty build directory, and changing directories to that build directory (which will become the top-level directory of the build tree).

- Configure the PLplot build and install by running

      	cmake <cmake options> <top-level directory of the source tree>

  on the command line. Many `cmake` options are possible. Two common ones that are often sufficient for most purposes are `-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation prefix>` (to specify the top-level directory of the soon-to-be created install tree) and `-G <generator identification string>` (to identify the `cmake` backend generator to use such as "Unix Makefiles"). However, there are also many other `cmake` options that are specific to the PLplot build system that are documented in the `CMakeCache.txt` file that is created by the `cmake` command.

- Build PLplot by building the "all" target. For example, that would be done for the "Unix Makefiles" generator case by

      	make all

- Install PLplot by building the "install" target. For example, that would be done for the "Unix Makefiles" generator case by

      	make install

- Determine the list of additional targets that are available for the PLplot build by building the "help" target. For example, that would be done for the "Unix Makefiles" generator case by

      	make help

For additional platform-specific details beyond the above generic steps, please consult our wiki.

After PLplot has been configured, built, and installed, you can write code in C or any of the languages that have PLplot bindings to make the desired PLplot calls. Standard example programs in all supported languages are included with the PLplot software package. The installation of those examples includes both a CMake-based build system (see `<installation prefix>/share/plplot5.14.0/examples/CMakelists.txt`) and a more traditional (Makefile + pkg-config) build system (see `<installation prefix>/share/plplot5.14.0/examples/Makefile`) for building and linking the examples. Either of these two build systems can be adapted by users to build and link their own PLplot-related code for compiled languages or to test PLplot related code that is compiled or which is written in a scripting language where PLplot capability is dynamically loaded. However, note the CMake-based build system for the installed examples should work on all platforms where PLplot can be built while the traditional build system for the installed examples will only work on platforms (e.g., Linux) which have `make` (only with GNU extensions), `pkg-config`, and `bash` (required for testing targets) installed. Plots generated from these example programs as well as the source code for those examples in all our supported languages are available from links given here.

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