GL Jett Graphics Library Print-oriented graphics documentation
Technical Reference

Build and License Guide

Graphics library for ink-jet printing.

Build and license guide

The repository contains two build surfaces:

  • the native C++ library and test solution under GraphicsLibrary.sln
  • the Jekyll documentation site under docs/

The published documentation is available at matt123p.github.io/jett-graphics-library.

Native build requirements

The native codebase is currently a Windows-first Visual Studio solution. To build it from source you need:

  • Git
  • Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload
  • the MSVC v143 toolset
  • a recent Windows SDK
  • PowerShell for the helper scripts and bootstrap commands
  • an OpenCL runtime and driver if you want to run the GPU backend

The solution currently defines Debug|Win32 and Release|Win32 configurations. The repository-level MSBuild props file enables vcpkg manifest mode automatically and selects the x86-windows triplet for Win32 builds.

Third-party dependencies

The native build uses the repository-local vcpkg checkout plus the manifest in vcpkg.json to restore these packages:

  • FreeType
  • Little CMS 2
  • libjpeg-turbo with JPEG 8 compatibility enabled
  • libpng
  • libtiff
  • zlib

Build the native library

  1. Open a Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio 2022, or another shell where msbuild is available on PATH.
  2. Bootstrap the local vcpkg copy from the repository root:
.\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
  1. Build the solution:
msbuild .\GraphicsLibrary.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=Win32
  1. Swap Release for Debug when you need a debug build.
  2. If you prefer the IDE, open GraphicsLibrary.sln in Visual Studio and build either the GraphicsLibrary project or the whole solution.

On the first build, vcpkg manifest mode restores the declared native dependencies automatically. If the vcpkg/ directory is missing from your checkout, restore it before building because the solution expects a repository-local vcpkg root.

Run the test executable

The GraphicsTest project builds a native test runner alongside the library. After building the solution, run the generated GraphicsTest executable from the solution output directory.

The test runner performs generated-asset checks, colour-management tests, CPU and GPU rendering passes, and output comparisons between the two execution modes. GPU-oriented tests require a working OpenCL stack. For CPU-only integration work, initialize the library with jett::init(false) instead of jett::init(true).

Build the documentation locally

The docs site is a standalone Jekyll project under docs/. To build or preview it locally you need Ruby and Bundler.

Install the gem dependencies and build the site with the repository helper script:

.\GraphicsLibrary\build-docs-jekyll.ps1 -InstallDependencies
.\GraphicsLibrary\build-docs-jekyll.ps1

To serve the docs locally with live reload:

.\GraphicsLibrary\build-docs-jekyll.ps1 -Serve

If you prefer to work directly inside docs/, the equivalent command is bundle exec jekyll build.

Project license

The source code in this repository is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3.0 (LGPL-3.0). The full text ships in the top-level LICENSE file.

In practice, that means the library itself remains under LGPL-3.0 even when used by another application, and any redistribution of the library should preserve the required license notices and LGPL rights for recipients. Treat this section as a practical summary rather than legal advice.

For a more focused walkthrough of those terms, see LGPL license.