Installation on Windows

michaeldessena · November 21, 2025, 10:56am

Operating System: Windows 11
Compiler/Version: Visual Studio 18 2026

Hi
Is there a full guide, step-by-step, to install a Geant4 application and all the dependencies on Windows, supporting:

multithreading
QT visualization
HDF5
GDML
ROOT

Thanks a lot in advance

Michael

bmorgan · November 21, 2025, 11:21am

Installing Geant4 itself is covered in the Installation Guide. Building an application is covered in both the Installation Guide: How to Use and the Application Developer Guide.

Installation of Qt, Xerces-C, HDF5 and ROOT will be covered on their respective sites.

michaeldessena · November 21, 2025, 11:45am

Thanks @bmorgan

last question: which are the flags I need to enable during HDF5 build from cmake in order to support also multithreading?

Thanks

bmorgan · November 21, 2025, 2:07pm

Check the HDF5 install guide here:

github.com/HDFGroup/hdf5

release_docs/INSTALL_CMake.txt

develop

************************************************************************
* Build and Install HDF5 C, C++, Fortran and High-Level Libraries      *
* and tools with CMake                                                 *
************************************************************************

                     Table of Contents

Section I:    Preconditions
Section II:   Quick Step Building HDF5 Libraries with CMake Script Mode
Section III:  Quick Step Building HDF5 Libraries with CMake Command Mode
Section IV:   Further Considerations
Section V:    Options for building HDF5 Libraries with CMake Command Line
Section VI:   CMake option defaults for HDF5
Section VII:  User Defined Options for HDF5 Libraries with CMake
Section VIII: User Defined Compile Flags for HDF5 Libraries with CMake
Section IX:   Considerations for Cross-Compiling
Section X:    Using CMakePresets.json for Compiling
Section XI:   Using the Library
Section XII:  Using CMake Regex Options for Testing
Section XIII: Java FFM Testing

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or the relevant one for the version you’re installing. It should be HDF5_ENABLE_THREADSAFE pretty consistently though. Bear in mind HDF5 support is still considered experimental in Geant4, especially on Windows.

michaeldessena · November 21, 2025, 3:38pm

Thanks,

And last do you suggest also the installation of VecGeom?

Honestly I don’t get the difference between installing and not

Thanks

system · December 21, 2025, 3:39pm

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