Download>Using from the command line

These instructions explain how to use VLFeat from the command line (shell).

Download and unpack the latest VLFeat binary distribution in a directory of your choice (e.g. ``~/src/vlfeat). Let ``VLFEATROOT denote this directory.

The command line tools are located in ``VLFEATROOT/bin/ARCH. Here ``ARCH denotes the subdirectory relative to your architecture (e.g. ``mac for Mac OS X PPC, ``maci for Mac OS X Intel, ``glnx86 for Linux, and so on). For the sake of illustration, the following table gives the path to the SIFT feature extraction program for the varius architectures:

Platform | ``ARCH | Path to command
--- | --- | ---
Windows 32 | ``win32 | ``VLFEATROOT\bin\w32\sift.exe
Windows 64 | ``win64 | ``VLFEATROOT\bin\w64\sift.exe
Mac Intel 32 | ``maci | ``VLFEATROOT/bin/maci/sift
Mac Intel 64 | ``maci64 | ``VLFEATROOT/bin/maci64/sift
Linux 32 | ``glnx86 | ``VLFEATROOT/bin/glnx86/sift
Linux 64 | ``glnxa64 | ``VLFEATROOT/bin/glnxa64/sift

All commands have a corresponding man page found in ``VLFEATROOT/src. For UNIX based systems, the man pages can be viewed with the ``man utility. For instance

    > man VLFEATROOT/src/sift.1

It might be convenient to add VLFeat to the system search paths. In Linux and Mac OS X this involves modifying the ``PATH and ``MANPATH environment variables. The exact details may vary, but it should be enough to add the following to your ``~/.bash_profile:

    export PATH=VLFEATROOT/bin/ARCH:$PATH
    export MANPATH=VLFEATROOT/src:$MANPATH

Alternatively, you can copy the executables and man pages to appropriate system-wide directories.