In this section we describe how the RVO Library is compiled on various platforms.

Windows - Visual Studio 2005

Perform the following steps to successfully compile the RVO Library.

Unzip the downloaded file into some directory, here referred to as $DIR.
Open the solution $DIR\RVOLIB\RVOLIB.sln into Visual Studio 2005, and select the Release configuration (or alternatively ReleaseST if you do not want to use parallellization).
Build the solution. This creates a library file rvo.lib (or rvo_st.lib for the single threaded version) in the $DIR\lib directory, and copies the header files RVOSimulator.h and vector2.h to the $DIR\include directory.
Use the rvo.lib file, along with the header files RVOSimulator.h and vector2.h in a third party project.

UNIX-based system (e.g. Linux, Cygwin, BSD, and OS X)

The INSTALL file in the root distribution directory has detailed instructions on the standard build system used in for this library; in summary:

Unpack the tarball
In the tarball directory, run './configure'; for details on how to configure the build for your system, see './configure –help'
In the same directory, run 'make'
To install the headers and library, run 'make install'. You may need elevated permissions, depending on the prefix passed to configure
The flags '-lrvo' and '-Irvo' should be passed to the linker and compiler, respectively, to build your own software using the RVO Library

In the section on using the RVO Library, there is information on how to use the library functionality in your project.