Install OpenCV (see previous posts for Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and OpenCV 2.4 in Ubuntu 12.04).

Install Eclipse CDT:

sudo apt-get install eclipse-cdt

Open Eclipse CDT and select a workspace (it’s just a path to store projects together). Create a new “C++ Project”, give it a name and select “Empty Project” on “Project type” and “Linux GCC” on “Toolchains”.

Right click on the project folder and select “Properties”. Go to “C/C++ Build->Settings”. Then, inside “Tool Settings” tab, go to “GCC C++ Compiler->Includes” and fill “Include paths (-l)” with the path of your OpenCV include installation. If you installed OpenCV from the source code it will possibly be “/usr/local/include/opencv2” (or the path you entered in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX when configuring with CMake), but if you installed from the repositories it should be “/usr/include/opencv2“.

Now go to “GCC C++ Linker->Libraries” and fill “Libraries (-l)” with (at least) those OpenCV libraries:

opencv_core
opencv_highgui

And “Library search paths (-L)” with the path location of your OpenCV installation libraries. As before, if you installed from the source it should be “/usr/local/lib” (same here with CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX) and if you installed with repositories “/usr/lib“.

Now it’s time to code. Go to “File->New->Source file” and create a new file called “main.cpp“. Fill it with:

#include "opencv.hpp"

int main(int argc, char* argv[])  {

        IplImage* img = cvCreateImage( cvSize( 640, 480 ), IPL_DEPTH_8U, 3 );

        cvCircle( img, cvPoint( 320, 240 ), 100, cvScalar( 255, 0, 0 ), 5 );

        cvNamedWindow( "OpenCV Window", CV_WINDOW_NORMAL );
        cvShowImage( "OpenCV Window", img );

        cvWaitKey(0);

        cvDestroyWindow( "OpenCV Window" );
        cvReleaseImage( &img );

        return 0;
}

This code will just show a black window with a blue circle in it and end when you press any key. Not very fancy but we just want to check if all runs OK.

Eclipse CDT comes with an option to build automatically, but I always disable it deselecting “Project->Build Automatically”. Build all by pressing Control+B or going to “Project->Build All”. Before debugging/running our application we need to configure the debugging/running environment. Go to “Run->Debug Configurations…” and do a double click on “C/C++ Application”. It will create a new debug configuration, but “C/C++ Application” parameter may not be automatically configured (this happend to me), so use “Browse…” button to select a “Project”, select your current project, and now (if your application binary program does exist) all should be OK to push “Debug” button.

You should now be able to run and debug your OpenCV application. Using any other library with Eclipse CDT is pretty much the same.