Appendix D — Building on Windows (MSVC + vcpkg)

The recommended route on Windows is vcpkg for dependencies and the Visual Studio (MSVC) toolchain. There is no pkg-config requirement — the build falls back to CMake package configs / find_library.

1. Toolchain

  • Visual Studio 2022 (Desktop C++ workload) or the Build Tools.
  • vcpkg bootstrapped somewhere, e.g. C:\vcpkg.

2. Dependencies via vcpkg

The repo root carries a vcpkg.json manifest, so vcpkg runs in manifest mode: don’t pass package names, just install the manifest from the project directory (CI does the same):

vcpkg install --triplet x64-windows

That provides cfitsio, zlib, lz4, zstd and pugixml. Qt itself comes from the official installer or aqt — include the qtimageformats module (the TIFF/WebP plugins live there, not in qtbase).

CCfits and libXISF are not in vcpkg — build them yourself against the same toolchain and install into a prefix you pass to CMake (below). For each:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake ^
               -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:/local
cmake --build build --config Release
cmake --install build --config Release

(CCfits source: HEASARC. libXISF: https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/libXISF)

3. Configure and build NebulaScope

From the repository root:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake ^
               -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:/local
cmake --build build --config Release
build\src\Release\nebulascope.exe
  • cfitsio is found through its vcpkg CMake config (the build auto-detects the cfitsio / CFITSIO::CFITSIO target — no pkg-config needed).
  • CCfits and libXISF are found via find_library/find_path under CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH. If they sit elsewhere, pass them explicitly: -DCCFITS_INCLUDE_DIR=... -DCCFITS_LIB=... -DXISF_INCLUDE_DIR=... -DXISF_LIB=...

At configure time you should see a line like:

-- CFITSIO link: <paths to cfitsio>
-- libXISF: C:/local/lib/XISF.lib  (headers: C:/local/include)

4. Running

Qt apps on Windows need their DLLs alongside the .exe. The simplest way:

windeployqt build\src\Release\nebulascope.exe

That copies the required Qt DLLs and image-format plugins next to the binary. Also ensure cfitsio.dll, CCfits.dll, and XISF.dll (and zlib/lz4) are on PATH or copied beside the .exe.

Command-line use is the same as elsewhere:

nebulascope.exe *.fits
nebulascope.exe --list set.txt
nebulascope.exe --help

Troubleshooting

The application was unable to start (0xc000007b) / missing DLLs — run windeployqt, and copy the cfitsio/CCfits/XISF DLLs next to the .exe.

cfitsio not found — make sure you passed the vcpkg toolchain file. Without it, CMake can’t see vcpkg-installed packages.

Link errors for lz4/zlib/pugixml — your libXISF is static; uncomment the find_library lines in the top-level CMakeLists.txt and add them in src/CMakeLists.txt.