This example project demonstrates how you can write and build a program that uses mathplot as a library along with a little Dear ImGui frame to set (and act on) options for the visualization.

This project is just one CMakeLists.txt file containing the commands required to use mathplot (with imgui) and a single target (prog1), which compiles the example program prog1.cpp.

To make your own program, you could either replace prog1.cpp with your own code, or incorporate the relevant parts of the CMakeLists.txt file into your own CMakeLists.txt in another project.

If you are using Debian or Ubuntu, the following apt command should install the mathplot dependencies. This installs the clang-20 compiler, which is required to compile mathplot modules (clang-21 and clang-22 also work).

sudo apt install build-essential cmake git ninja-build  \
                 freeglut3-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev \
                 libglfw3-dev libfreetype-dev clang-20 clang-tools-20

On Arch Linux the following command should install dependencies:

sudo pacman -S vtk lapack blas freeglut glfw-wayland

On Fedora Linux, the following command should install the required dependencies

sudo dnf install clang cmake libglvnd-devel mesa-libGL-devel glfw-devel freetype-devel

I'd love to know the equivalents for other Linux distributions so I can include them in the mathplot documentation, so if you know, please pull-request them!

If you're building on a Mac, you can refer to the Mac README for help. You only need to obtain and build glfw3; OpenGL and Freetype should already be installed by default.

To build and run the example:

# Clone this example
git clone git@github.com:sebsjames/mathplot_imgui # or your fork of it

# Bring in the four submodules - sebsjames/mathplot, sebsjames/maths,
# nlohmann/json and ocornut/imgui. Your project will need these
# submodules too. They don't HAVE to be submodules, you can just copy
# or symlink the three codebases if you prefer.

cd mathplot_imgui # or whatever you named your fork/copy
git submodule init
git submodule update

# Build prog1 in a 'build' directory
mkdir build
cd build
CC=clang-20 CXX=clang++-20 cmake .. -GNinja
ninja
./prog1 # You should see a window containing a geodesic polynomial and an ImGui!