Linux: Install OpenCV

It is better to compile OpenCV from scratch than to use the precompiled versions in Ubuntu as most of them are not optimized.

Make sure to have these packages installed:

sudo apt-get install pkg-config ant libeigen3-dev sphinx-common libopenexr-dev libtbb-dev python-numpy

Get the OpenCV sources from here: OpenCV

Extract the archive and prepare for compilation:

tar -C ~/local/src/ -xf ~/Downloads/OpenCV-2.4.3.tar.bz2
cd ~/local/src/OpenCV-2.4.3/
mkdir build && cd build

Configure with following options:

ccmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DWITH_GIGEAPI=OFF -DWITH_CUDA=OFF -DWITH_PVAPI=OFF -DWITH_TBB=ON ..

Hit 'c' to configure and check that there are no dependency problems. Hit 'c' again and then 'g' to generate. Now we can compile and install with:

make
sudo make install

Add the pkg-config path to the end of your bashrc so that the OpenCV libraries can be found later by other programs:

gedit ~/.bashrc
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig