In this post, we will provide step by step instructions on how to install Dlib on Ubuntu.
Step 1: Install OS libraries
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake pkg-config sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libatlas-base-dev sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev libboost-python-dev
Step 2: Install Python libraries
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-pip python3-dev python3-pip sudo -H pip2 install -U pip numpy sudo -H pip3 install -U pip numpy
We will use Virtual Environment to install Python libraries. It is generally a good practice in order to separate your project environment and global environment.
# Install virtual environment sudo pip2 install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper sudo pip3 install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper echo "# Virtual Environment Wrapper" >> ~/.bashrc echo "source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc ############ For Python 2 ############ # create virtual environment mkvirtualenv facecourse-py2 -p python2 workon facecourse-py2 # now install python libraries within this virtual environment pip install numpy scipy matplotlib scikit-image scikit-learn ipython # quit virtual environment deactivate ###################################### ############ For Python 3 ############ # create virtual environment mkvirtualenv facecourse-py3 -p python3 workon facecourse-py3 # now install python libraries within this virtual environment pip install numpy scipy matplotlib scikit-image scikit-learn ipython # quit virtual environment deactivate ######################################
Step 3: Compile DLib
Step 3.1: Compile C++ binary
Davis King, creator of Dlib, recommends using CMake for using Dlib in your code.
But if you want to use Dlib as a library follow these steps:
wget http://dlib.net/files/dlib-19.6.tar.bz2 tar xvf dlib-19.6.tar.bz2 cd dlib-19.6/ mkdir build cd build cmake .. cmake --build . --config Release sudo make install sudo ldconfig cd ..
Now you can use pkg-config to provide path to Dlib’s include directory and link Dlib library file.
pkg-config --libs --cflags dlib-1
Step 3.2: Compile Python module
Activate Python virtual environment.
############ For Python 2 ############ workon facecourse-py2 ############ For Python 3 ############ workon facecourse-py3
Now let’s compile and install Dlib’s Python module.
# move to dlib's root directory cd dlib-19.6 python setup.py install # clean up(this step is required if you want to build dlib for both Python2 and Python3) rm -rf dist rm -rf tools/python/build rm python_examples/dlib.so
We have cleaned up few files and directories because Dlib creates Python modules for Python2 and Python3 with the same name. Suppose you ran the setup.py in Python2 virtual environment, it will generate dlib.so in python_examples directory. Now if you deactivate Python2 virtual env, activate Python3 virtual env and run setup.py file, it will replace dlib.so (which was compiled with Python2) in python_examples directory with newer one (which is compiled with Python3). When you will try to run any python_example from within this directory, it will import this dlib.so instead of one located in site-packages or dist-packages directory and throw an error. Although this error won’t occur is a local copy of dlib.so is not present in current directory but it is better to remove local copies to avoid any confusion.
For consistency, we have installed Python and C++ binaries of Dlib using the same source code.
If you are going to use only Python module of Dlib you can also install Python bindings for Dlib using pip.
pip install dlib
Now you can exit from Python virtual environment.
deactivate
Now, whenever you are going to run Python scripts which use Dlib you have to activate the virtual environment using workon command.
Subscribe & Download Code
If you liked this article and would like to download code (C++ and Python) and example images used in all posts of this blog, please subscribe to our newsletter. You will also receive a free Computer Vision Resource Guide. In our newsletter, we share OpenCV tutorials and examples written in C++/Python, and Computer Vision and Machine Learning algorithms and news.
