Jungfraujoch/docs/JFJOCH_VIEWER.md

jfjoch_viewer

jfjoch_viewer is the interactive desktop application of Jungfraujoch. It opens diffraction datasets, displays each image together with the analysis overlay (spots, predictions, azimuthal integration, per-image statistics), and can follow a live data collection by syncing with a running jfjoch_broker over its HTTP interface.

It is a standalone Qt 6 application, distributed pre-built for Linux and Windows on the Gitea release page and in the Jungfraujoch RPM/APT repositories — see Release contents for what each package contains and what it requires, and Deployment for how to install it.

Where it fits among the three analysis tools

Tool	Mode	Driven by	Output
jfjoch_broker	Online, real-time streaming analysis on FPGA + GPU	HTTP/REST + ZeroMQ	Live results and statistics, images streamed to jfjoch_writer
jfjoch_viewer	Interactive, on-screen exploration	Qt desktop application	On screen; a processing job can write the same files as rugnux
rugnux	Offline batch processing of a stored dataset	Command-line interface	_process.h5, and .mtz/.cif/.hkl when merging

Functionality

• Opens HDF5 files written by jfjoch_writer (*_master.h5) and the *_process.h5 files produced by rugnux. It also opens NXmx files written by DECTRIS detectors, though that path has had only limited testing.
• Runs an embedded data-processing pipeline — the same analysis code as the rest of Jungfraujoch — performing spot finding, indexing and integration on the displayed image, with the result drawn over it. This interactive analysis is not written anywhere.
• Runs full processing jobs on the open dataset from the Processing panel, on the same rugnux engine and off the GUI thread: full analysis or azimuthal integration only, over a chosen image range, optionally writing _process.h5 and the merged .mtz/.cif. A finished run becomes a selectable view of the dataset, so several processing runs can be compared against each other, and its merging statistics open in their own window. The equivalent rugnux command line can also be copied out to run the same job on a cluster instead.
• Settings panel for the geometry, unit cell, spot finding, indexing, azimuthal integration, Bragg integration, scaling, powder calibration and a reference dataset — the same settings the CLI takes.
• Auxiliary windows: image list, dataset metadata, spot list, reflection list, reciprocal-space viewer, 2D azimuthal-integration image, calibration-image viewer and a magnifier; plus the Inspector (per-image statistics, image features, resolution rings, ROI statistics), the Image strip thumbnail feed and dataset-info charts.
• User-mask editing: build a user mask interactively, load one from TIFF (replacing or adding to the current one), save it as TIFF, clear it, or upload it to a connected server.
• Layout presets (View ▸ Image layout / Processing layout / Reset layout) rearrange the docks for looking at images or at processing results.

Hardware

As with the rest of Jungfraujoch, serious performance requires an NVIDIA GPU. On systems with a GPU, use the CUDA build (a separate package variant everywhere: RPM/APT repository, .tgz and Windows installer) for the embedded indexing and integration; the non-CUDA build runs the same pipeline on the CPU at much lower throughput. The CUDA build also runs on a machine without a GPU — see Release contents ▸ CUDA and non-CUDA builds.

Opening data

• File ▸ Open (Ctrl+O) — open a local HDF5 file.
• File ▸ Open HTTP (Ctrl+H) — connect to a jfjoch_broker HTTP endpoint to follow a live collection. The dialog defaults to host localhost and port 8080; these defaults can be overridden with the environment variables JUNGFRAUJOCH_HTTP_HOST and JUNGFRAUJOCH_HTTP_PORT.
• Command line — jfjoch_viewer <file.h5> opens a file (or an http://host:port URL) on start-up. --dbus <true|false> (-d) enables or disables the D-Bus interface (default: enabled); --help and --version behave as usual.

D-Bus interface

When enabled, the viewer registers the D-Bus interface ch.psi.jfjoch_viewer, so other processes can drive it:

• LoadFile(filename, image_number=0, summation=1) — open a file (or an http://host:port URL) and display the given image.
• LoadImage(image_number, summation=1) — navigate to an image in the already-open dataset.

summation sums that many consecutive images before display.

Building from source on Windows

jfjoch_viewer is the one Jungfraujoch component that is cross-platform: it builds on Windows 11 with MSVC and the full CUDA GPU path. (The rest of Jungfraujoch — broker, receiver, FPGA host — is Linux-only.) A pre-built installer is published with every release, so building from source is only needed to develop or to change the build options. On Windows the build is automatically restricted to the viewer and the libraries it needs (JFJOCH_VIEWER_ONLY is forced on), and the remaining dependencies are fetched and built automatically (the first configure needs network access).

Verified toolchain — the same one the released installer is built with:

• Windows 11
• Visual Studio 2026 with the C++ (MSVC) toolset — required; CUDA on Windows builds through MSVC
• CUDA Toolkit 13.3 (12.8 or newer is required) — for the GPU indexing/integration path
• Qt 6.11 for MSVC (msvc2022_64), including the Qt Charts module — e.g. C:\Qt\6.11.1\msvc2022_64
• CMake plus Ninja. The CMake that ships with Visual Studio is the simplest choice and works out of the box — it comes with the C++ workload, so there is nothing extra to install. Any recent standalone CMake (from cmake.org, or the one bundled with Qt in C:\Qt\Tools\CMake_64) works too.
• zlib and Eigen — the two libraries not auto-fetched on Windows. Build/install both into one prefix (here C:\deps) and point CMake at it:

  :: static zlib
  git clone --branch v1.3.1 https://github.com/madler/zlib
  cmake -G Ninja -S zlib -B zlib-build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:/deps
  cmake --build zlib-build --target install
  :: Eigen 3.4 (header-only) -- install just the headers with `cmake --install`; the BLAS/LAPACK/test
  :: targets are disabled since they are not needed (and fail to build under MSVC). Use the 3.4 series:
  :: the project requests find_package(Eigen3 3.4), which Eigen's same-major rule rejects for 5.x.
  git clone --branch 3.4.0 https://gitlab.com/libeigen/eigen.git
  cmake -G Ninja -S eigen -B eigen-build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:/deps ^
    -DEIGEN_BUILD_BLAS=OFF -DEIGEN_BUILD_LAPACK=OFF -DEIGEN_BUILD_DOC=OFF -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF
  cmake --install eigen-build
  

• Optional: NSIS to build the .exe installer.

Configure and build from an x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2026 (so cl, nvcc and ninja are on PATH):

cmake -G Ninja -B build-win -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^
  -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:/deps;C:/Qt/6.11.1/msvc2022_64"
cmake --build build-win --target jfjoch_viewer

Notes:

• CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH (the C:/deps prefix plus Qt) is the only required flag — CMake finds zlib and Eigen from the prefix, so no separate -DZLIB_ROOT is needed.
• The CUDA toolchain is located automatically from the CUDA_PATH environment variable that the CUDA installer sets (or from nvcc on PATH). Pass -DCMAKE_CUDA_COMPILER=".../bin/nvcc.exe" only if nvcc is installed in a nonstandard location and is not found.
• For a machine without an NVIDIA GPU, add -DJFJOCH_USE_CUDA=OFF: the viewer then runs the same pipeline on the CPU (FFTW indexer) at lower throughput.

To produce a self-contained installer (bundles the Qt runtime via windeployqt, the analysis CLIs, and — on the CUDA build — the cuFFT runtime DLL, so the target host needs neither Qt nor a CUDA toolkit), with NSIS installed:

cd build-win
cpack

The NSIS generator is selected automatically on Windows (no -G needed). What comes out, and how the CUDA and CPU variants are named and told apart, is described in Release contents ▸ Windows installer.