How to install Slic3r on RPi

How to install Slic3r on RPi

On Raspbian 10 Buster, slic3r and slic3r-prusa are available in the apt repository and do not need to be built on the Pi. Continue below if you have older Raspbian or want to build from source anyway.

Follow these steps in order. Some steps will take a long time depending on how fast your RPi is. These steps assume that your RPi is connected to the network and you are logged in to it.

1. Increase swap size to 1000MB so that we have enough memory to compile.

   1. Edit /etc/dphys-swapfile and change the swap file size to CONF_SWAPSIZE=1000.

   sudo sed -i '/^CONF_SWAPSIZE.*/s//CONF_SWAPSIZE=1000/' /etc/dphys-swapfile

   • Raspbian Stretch seems to require more memory to compile because of the different libraries and how our dependencies are satisfied. Try setting this to 2000 if the compile fails with errors like internal compiler error: Killed (program cc1plus)
   2. sudo reboot now to reboot the system.

2. Log in again. Use one of the configurations below as-is or modify. Copy and paste the text into the RPi command line.

   • alexrj's slic3r, the original

     SLIC3R_REPO="https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r.git"
     SLIC3R_VERSION="master"
     SLIC3R_DIR=~/Slic3r
     

   • prusa3d, version 1.33.8 (without Intel Threading Building Blocks)

     SLIC3R_REPO="https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r.git"
     SLIC3R_VERSION="version_1.33.8"
     SLIC3R_DIR=~/Slic3r
     

   • prusa3d, latest known working (with Intel Threading Building Blocks). (You don't have to adjust name or email.)

     SLIC3R_REPO="https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r.git"
     SLIC3R_VERSION="version_1.39.2"
     SLIC3R_DIR=~/Slic3r-1.39.2
     TBB_RELEASE="https://github.com/01org/tbb/archive/2018_U4.tar.gz"
     TBB_DIR=~/tbb-2018.4
     TBB_VERSION="2018.4"
     YOUR_NAME="Your Name"
     YOUR_EMAIL="email address"
     

   • prusa3d, latest (with Intel Threading Building Blocks). (You don't have to adjust name or email.)

     SLIC3R_REPO="https://github.com/prusa3d/Slic3r.git"
     SLIC3R_VERSION="master"
     SLIC3R_DIR=~/Slic3r
     TBB_RELEASE="https://github.com/01org/tbb/archive/2017_U7.tar.gz"
     TBB_DIR=~/tbb
     TBB_VERSION="7"
     YOUR_NAME="Your Name"
     YOUR_EMAIL="email address"
     

3. Copy and paste all of this:

3.1. Install library

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y git libboost-all-dev libboost-geometry-utils-perl libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev git-core build-essential libgtk2.0-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libwx-perl libmodule-build-perl libnet-dbus-perl cpanminus libextutils-cbuilder-perl gcc-4.7 g++-4.7 libwx-perl libperl-dev libextutils-cppguess-perl libeigen3-dev libglew-dev libglewmx-dev cpanminus

3.1a. Raspbian Stretch requires a different list as of June 24th, 2018. This may change in future. An alternate list of libraries has been found to work, however it will be necessary to install some dependencies directly into Perl using CPAN

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt install -y git libboost-all-dev libboost-geometry-utils-perl libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev git-core build-essential libwxgtk3.0-dev libgtk-3-dev libwx-perl libmodule-build-perl libnet-dbus-perl cpanminus gcc-4.7 g++-4.7 libwx-perl libperl-dev libextutils-cppguess-perl libeigen3-dev libglew-dev cpanminus libcurl4-openssl-dev

Then

sudo cpan ExtUtils::CBuilder ExtUtils::CppGuess Alien::wxWidgets CPAN::Mini  ExtUtils::XSpp::Cmd  ExtUtils::Typemaps::Basic

3.2. compile TBB and create a package to install it in system

if [ ! -z "${TBB_DIR}" ]; then
sudo rm -rf ${TBB_DIR}
fi
mkdir -p ${TBB_DIR}
cd ${TBB_DIR}
wget ${TBB_RELEASE}
tar xzvf $(basename ${TBB_RELEASE})
cd tbb*
make tbb CXXFLAGS="-DTBB_USE_GCC_BUILTINS=1 -D__TBB_64BIT_ATOMICS=0"
cd ${TBB_DIR}
mkdir libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf
cd libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf
mkdir -p usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
mkdir -p usr/local/include
mkdir DEBIAN

cd ${TBB_DIR}/libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf/DEBIAN
cat > control << EOF
Package: libtbb-dev
Priority: extra
Section: universe/libdevel
Maintainer: ${YOUR_NAME} <${YOUR_EMAIL}>
Architecture: armhf
Version: ${TBB_VERSION}
Homepage: http://threadingbuildingblocks.org/
Description: parallelism library for C++ - development files
 TBB is a library that helps you leverage multi-core processor
 performance without having to be a threading expert. It represents a
 higher-level, task-based parallelism that abstracts platform details
 and threading mechanism for performance and scalability.
 .
 (Note: if you are a user of the i386 architecture, i.e., 32-bit Intel
 or compatible hardware, this package only supports Pentium4-compatible
 and higher processors.)
 .
 This package includes the TBB headers, libs and pkg-config
EOF

cd ${TBB_DIR}/libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf/usr/local/lib
cp ${TBB_DIR}/tbb*/build/*_release/libtbb.so.2 .
ln -s libtbb.so.2 libtbb.so

cd ${TBB_DIR}/tbb*/include
cp -r serial tbb ${TBB_DIR}/libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf/usr/local/include

cd ${TBB_DIR}/libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
cat > tbb.pc << EOF
# Manually added pkg-config file for tbb - START
prefix=/usr/local
exec_prefix=\${prefix}
libdir=\${exec_prefix}/lib
includedir=\${prefix}/include
Name: tbb
Description: thread building block
Version: ${TBB_VERSION}
Cflags: -I\${includedir} -DTBB_USE_GCC_BUILTINS=1 -D__TBB_64BIT_ATOMICS=0
Libs: -L\${libdir} -ltbb
# Manually added pkg-config file for tbb - END
EOF

cd ${TBB_DIR}
sudo chown -R root:staff libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf
sudo dpkg-deb --build libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf

sudo dpkg -i ${TBB_DIR}/libtbb-dev_${TBB_VERSION}_armhf.deb
sudo ldconfig

3.3. compile Slic3r or Prusa

sudo rm -rf ${SLIC3R_DIR}
git clone ${SLIC3R_REPO} ${SLIC3R_DIR}
cd ${SLIC3R_DIR}
git fetch ${SLIC3R_REPO}
git checkout ${SLIC3R_VERSION}
perl Build.PL --sudo
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release #-DSLIC3R_WX_STABLE=1 #maybe need to use this option by uncommenting
sudo make -j2
ctest --verbose
cd ..
./slic3r.pl --help

It will take a long time. On RPi3, maybe 1-2 hours. If you see slic3r's help page at the end, you have succeeded. On RPi3B+ with Raspbian Stretch, it can take even longer, and even with more swap space, stopping the Octoprint server while compiling may be required to free up enough memory to complete. If cmake fails, make sure to have it installed and you choose the folder in which the CMakeFile.txt is located. This file might be in the src/ directory.