Advanced installation options¶

This section describes some common issues encountered when configuring and compiling BOUT++, how to manually install dependencies if they are not available, and how to configure optional libraries like SUNDIALS and PETSc.

Optimisation and run-time checking¶

Configure with --enable-checks=3 enables a lot of checks of operations performed by the field objects. This is very useful for debugging a code, and can be omitted once bugs have been removed. --enable=checks=2 enables less checking, especially the computationally rather expensive ones, while --enable-checks=0 disables most checks.

To get most checking, both from BOUT++ and from the compiler --enable-debug can be used. That enables checks of level 3, as well as debug flags, e.g. -g for gcc.

For (sometimes) more useful error messages, there is the --enable-track option. This keeps track of the names of variables and includes these in error messages.

To get a backtrace, you can set the environment variable BOUT_SHOW_BACKTRACE in order for the exception to include the backtrace.

To enable optimization, configure with --enable-optimize=3. This will try to set appropriate flags, but may not set the best ones. This should work well for gcc. Similar to checks, different levels can be specified, where 3 is high, and 0 means disabling all optimization. --enable-optimize=fast will set the -Ofast flag for gcc which enables optimizations that are not standard conforming, so proceed at own risk.

Manually set compilation flags¶

You can set the following environment variables if you need more control over how BOUT++ is built:

LDFLAGS: extra flags for linking, e.g. -L<library dir>
LIBS: extra libraries for linking, e.g. -l<library>
CPPFLAGS: preprocessor flags, e.g. -I<include dir>
CXXFLAGS: compiler flags, e.g. -Wall
SUNDIALS_EXTRA_LIBS specifies additional libraries for linking to SUNDIALS, which are put at the end of the link command.

It is possible to change flags for BOUT++ after running configure, by editing the make.config file. Note that this is not recommended, as e.g. PVODE will not be built with these flags.

Machine-specific installation¶

These are some configurations which have been found to work on particular machines.

Archer¶

As of 20th April 2018, the following configuration should work

$ module swap PrgEnv-cray PrgEnv-gnu/5.1.29
$ module load fftw
$ module load archer-netcdf/4.1.3

When using CMake on Cray systems like Archer, you need to pass -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=CrayLinuxEnvironment so that the Cray compiler wrappers are detected properly.

KNL @ Archer¶

To use the KNL system, configure BOUT++ as follows:

./configure MPICXX=CC --host=knl --with-netcdf --with-pnetcdf=no --with-hypre=no CXXFLAGS="-xMIC-AVX512 -D_GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0"

Atlas¶

./configure --with-netcdf=/usr/local/tools/hdf5-gnu-serial-1.8.1/lib --with-fftw=/usr/local --with-pdb=/usr/gapps/pact/new/lnx-2.5-ib/gnu

Cab¶

./configure --with-netcdf=/usr/local/tools/hdf5-gnu-serial-1.8.1/lib --with-fftw=/usr/local/tools/fftw3-3.2 --with-pdb=/usr/gapps/pact/new/lnx-2.5-ib/gnu

Cori¶

First set up the environment by loading the correct modules. For Bash shell use:

and for C shell:

Then configure BOUT++ by running a script which calls CMake. Under bash:

and C shell:

At the time of writing, Hypre linking is not working with CUDA. If you come across errors with the above configuration, try turning off Hypre support:

or

See section GPU support for details of compiling and running on GPU machines, including Cori. Note that in order to access GPU nodes a request must be made through NERSC services.

Edison¶

module swap PrgEnv-intel PrgEnv-gnu
module load fftw
./configure MPICC=cc MPICXX=CC --with-netcdf=/global/u2/c/chma/PUBLIC/netcdf_edison/netcdf --with-fftw=/opt/fftw/3.3.0.1/x86_64

Hoffman2¶

./configure --with-netcdf=/u/local/apps/netcdf/current --with-fftw=/u/local/apps/fftw3/current --with-cvode=/u/local/apps/sundials/2.4.0 --with-lapack=/u/local/apps/lapack/current

Hopper¶

module swap PrgEnv-pgi PrgEnv-gnu
module load netcdf
module swap netcdf netcdf/4.1.3
module swap gcc gcc/4.6.3
./configure MPICC=cc MPICXX=CC --with-fftw=/opt/fftw/3.2.2.1 --with-pdb=/global/homes/u/umansky/PUBLIC/PACT_HOPP2/pact

Hyperion¶

With the bash shell use

export PETSC_DIR=~farley9/projects/petsc/petsc-3.2-p1
export PETSC_ARCH=arch-c
./configure --with-netcdf=/usr/local/tools/netcdf-gnu-4.1 --with-fftw=/usr/local MPICXX=mpiCC EXTRA_LIBS=-lcurl --with-petsc --with-cvode=~farley9/local --with-ida=~farley9/local

With the tcsh shell use

setenv PETSC_DIR ~farley9/projects/petsc/petsc-3.2-p1
setenv PETSC_ARCH arch-c
./configure --with-netcdf=/usr/local/tools/netcdf-gnu-4.1 --with-fftw=/usr/local MPICXX=mpiCC EXTRA_LIBS=-lcurl --with-petsc --with-cvode=~farley9/local --with-ida=~farley9/local

MacOS / Apple Darwin¶

Compiling with Apple Clang 12, the following configuration has been known to work

cmake . -B build -DBOUT_ENABLE_BACKTRACE=Off -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=Off -DBOUT_USE_NLS=Off -DBOUT_USE_UUID_SYSTEM_GENERATOR=Off
cd build
make

Marconi¶

module load intel intelmpi fftw lapack
module load szip zlib/1.2.8--gnu--6.1.0
module load hdf5/1.8.17--intel--pe-xe-2017--binary
module load netcdf-cxx4
module load python

To compile for the SKL partition, configure with

./configure --enable-checks=0 CPPFLAGS="-Ofast -funroll-loops -xCORE-AVX512 -mtune=skylake" --host skl

to enable AVX512 vectorization.

Note

As of 20/04/2018, an issue with the netcdf and netcdf-cxx4 modules means that you will need to remove -lnetcdf from EXTRA_LIBS in make.config after running ./configure and before running make. -lnetcdf needs also to be removed from bin/bout-config to allow a successful build of the python interface. Recreation of boutcore.pyx needs to be manually triggered, if boutcore.pyx has already been created.

Marconi with gnu compilers¶

It is also possible to configure on Marconi using gnu compilers, which may give better performance. A set of modules which work as of 4/5/2021 is

module load env-skl
module load profile/advanced
module load intel/pe-xe-2018--binary  # note need to keep the 'intel' module loaded in order for shared libraries needed by numpy/scipy to be available
module load gnu/7.3.0
module load openmpi/4.0.1--gnu--7.3.0
module load mkl/2017--binary
module load python/3.6.4
module load szip/2.1--gnu--6.1.0 zlib/1.2.8--gnu--6.1.0

Then download source code for hdf5-1.12.0 (hdf5 is available in a module on Marconi, but has issues linking OpenMPI), netCDF-c-4.7.4, netCDF-cxx4-4.3.1, and FFTW-3.3.9. Optionally also SUNDIALS-5.7.0 or PETSc-3.15.0. Configure and compile all of the downloaded packages. Make sure to install netCDF and netCDF-cxx4 into the same directory (this is assumed by netCDF’s linking strategy, and makes netCDF configuration simpler).

The following configuration commands have been used successfully:

hdf5-1.12.0:

./configure --prefix /directory/to/install/hdf5 --enable-build-mode=production
make
make install

netCDF-4.7.4 (note: using cmake to build gave errors in make test while the autotools build with configure passed all tests in make check; netCDF-4.8.0 failed to link to hdf5-1.12.0 and failed tests with both cmake and autotools):
```
CPPFLAGS="-I<prefix for hdf5>/include" LDFLAGS="-L<prefix for hdf5>/lib/" ./configure --prefix=/directory/to/install/netcdf
make
make install
```

netCDF-cxx4-4.3.1 (note: cmake build works, but installs to a lib64 subdirectory, while autotools installs to lib, so easier to use autotools to match netCDF):

CPPFLAGS="-I<prefix for hdf5>/include -I<prefix for netcdf>/include" LDFLAGS="-L<prefix for hdf5>/lib/ -L<prefix for netcdf>/lib/" ./configure --prefix=<prefix for netcdf>
make
make install

FFTW-3.3.9:

./configure --prefix /directory/to/install/fftw --enable-shared --enable-sse2 --enable-avx --enable-avx2 --enable-avx512 --enable-avx-128-fma
make
make install

SUNDIALS-5.7.0:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/directory/to/install/sundials -DMPI_ENABLE=ON ..
make
make install

PETSc-3.15.0:

unset PETSC_DIR
./configure COPTFLAGS="-O3" CXXOPTFLAGS="-O3" FOPTFLAGS="-O3" --with-batch --known-mpi-shared-libraries=1 --with-mpi-dir=$OPENMPI_HOME --download-fblaslapack --known-64-bit-blas-indices=0 --download-hypre --with-debugging=0 --prefix=/directory/to/install/petsc

then follow the instructions printed by PETSc at the end of each step to make, install and check the build.

Finally example configurations for BOUT++, where you should replace <…> by appropriate directories that you used to install the libraries:

for an optimized build (some experimentation with optimisation flags would be welcome, please share the results if you do!):

./configure --enable-optimize=3 --enable-checks=no --enable-static --with-netcdf=<...> --with-sundials=<...> --with-fftw=<...> --with-petsc=<...>

for a debugging build:

./configure --enable-debug --enable-static --with-netcdf=<...> --with-sundials=<...> --with-fftw=<...> --with-petsc=<...>

Ubgl¶

./configure --with-netcdf CXXFLAGS=-DMPICH_IGNORE_CXX_SEEK CFLAGS=-DMPICH_IGNORE_CXX_SEEK --with-pdb=/usr/gapps/pact/new_s/lnx-2.5-ib --with-netcdf=/usr/local/tools/netcdf/netcdf-4.1_c++

File formats¶

BOUT++ can currently use the NetCDF-4 file format, with experimental support for the parallel flavour. NetCDF is a widely used format and has many tools for viewing and manipulating files.

BOUT++ will look for ncxx4-config or nc-config in your $PATH. If it cannot find the libraries, or finds a different version than the one you want, you can point it at the correct version using:

./configure --with-netcdf=/path/to/ncxx4-config

where /path/to/ncxx4-config is the location of the ncxx4-config tool (nc-config will also work, but ncxx4-config is preferred).

Installing NetCDF from source¶

The latest versions of NetCDF have separated out the C++ API from the main C library. As a result, you will need to download and install both. Download the latest versions of the NetCDF-C and NetCDF-4 C++ libraries from https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/downloads/netcdf. As of September 2020, these are versions 4.7.4 and 4.3.1 respectively.

Untar the file and ’cd’ into the resulting directory:

$ tar -xzvf netcdf-4.7.4.tar.gz
$ cd netcdf-4.7.4

Then run configure, make and make install:

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local
$ make
$ make install

Sometimes configure can fail, in which case try disabling Fortran:

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local --disable-fortran
$ make
$ make install

Similarly for the C++ API:

$ tar -xzvf netcdf-cxx4-4.3.1.tar.gz
$ cd netcdf-cxx4-4.3.1
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local
$ make
$ make install

You may need to set a couple of environment variables as well:

$ export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

You should check where NetCDF actually installed its libraries. On some systems this will be $HOME/local/lib, but on others it may be, e.g. $HOME/local/lib64. Check which it is, and set $LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately.

OpenMP¶

BOUT++ can make use of OpenMP parallelism. To enable OpenMP, use the --enable-openmp flag to configure:

./configure --enable-openmp

OpenMP can be used to parallelise in more directions than can be achieved with MPI alone. For example, it is currently difficult to parallelise in X using pure MPI if FCI is used, and impossible to parallelise at all in Z with pure MPI.

OpenMP is in a large number of places now, such that a decent speed-up can be achieved with OpenMP alone. Hybrid parallelisation with both MPI and OpenMP can lead to more significant speed-ups, but it sometimes requires some fine tuning of numerical parameters in order to achieve this. This greatly depends on the details not just of your system, but also your particular problem. We have tried to choose “sensible” defaults that will work well for the most common cases, but this is not always possible. You may need to perform some testing yourself to find e.g. the optimum split of OpenMP threads and MPI ranks.

One such parameter that can potentially have a significant effect (for some problem sizes on some machines) is setting the OpenMP schedule used in some of the OpenMP loops (specifically those using BOUT_FOR). This can be set using:

./configure --enable-openmp --with-openmp-schedule=<schedule>

with <schedule> being one of: static (the default), dynamic, guided, auto or runtime.

Note

If you want to use OpenMP with Clang, you will need Clang 3.7+, and either libomp or libiomp.

You will be able to compile BOUT++ with OpenMP with lower versions of Clang, or using the GNU OpenMP library libgomp, but it will only run with a single thread.

Note

By default PVODE is built without OpenMP support. To enable this add --enable-pvode-openmp to the configure command.

Note

OpenMP will attempt to use all available threads by default. This can cause oversubscription problems on certain systems. You can limit the number of threads OpenMP uses with the OMP_NUM_THREADS environment variable. See your system documentation for more details.

SUNDIALS¶

The BOUT++ distribution includes a 1998 version of CVODE (then called PVODE) by Scott D. Cohen and Alan C. Hindmarsh, which is the default time integration solver. Whilst no serious bugs have been found in this code (as far as the authors are aware of), several features such as user-supplied preconditioners and constraints cannot be used with this solver. Currently, BOUT++ also supports the SUNDIALS solvers CVODE, IDA and ARKODE which are available from https://computation.llnl.gov/casc/sundials/main.html.

Note

BOUT++ currently supports SUNDIALS > 2.6, up to 5.4.0 as of September 2020. It is advisable to use the highest possible version

The full installation guide is found in the downloaded .tar.gz, but we will provide a step-by-step guide to install it and make it compatible with BOUT++ here:

$ tar -xzvf sundials-5.4.0.tar.gz
$ cd sundials-5.4.0
$ mkdir build && cd build

$ cmake .. \
  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/local \
  -DLAPACK_ENABLE=ON \
  -DOPENMP_ENABLE=ON \
  -DMPI_ENABLE=ON \
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=$(which mpicc) \
  -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=$(which mpicxx) \

$ make
$ make test
$ make install

The SUNDIALS IDA solver is a Differential-Algebraic Equation (DAE) solver, which evolves a system of the form $\mathbf{f}(\mathbf{u},\dot{\mathbf{u}},t) = 0$. This allows algebraic constraints on variables to be specified.

Use the --with-sundials option to configure BOUT++ with SUNDIALS:

$ ./configure --with-sundials=/path/to/sundials/install

SUNDIALS will allow you to select at run-time which solver to use. See Options for more details on how to do this.

Notes:

If compiling SUNDIALS, make sure that it is configured with MPI (MPI_ENABLE=ON)
If you install SUNDIALS to a non-standard (system) directory, you will probably have to add the lib directory to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

PETSc¶

BOUT++ can use PETSc https://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/ for time-integration and for solving elliptic problems, such as inverting Poisson and Helmholtz equations.

Currently, BOUT++ supports PETSc versions 3.7 - 3.14. More recent versions may well work, but the PETSc API does sometimes change in backward-incompatible ways, so this is not guaranteed. To install PETSc version 3.13, use the following steps:

$ cd ~
$ wget http://ftp.mcs.anl.gov/pub/petsc/release-snapshots/petsc-3.13.4.tar.gz
$ tar -xzvf petsc-3.13.4.tar.gz
$ cd petsc-3.13.4

Use the following configure options to ensure PETSc is compatible with BOUT++:

$ ./configure \
  --with-mpi=yes \
  --with-precision=double \
  --with-scalar-type=real \
  --with-shared-libraries=1 \
  --with-debugging=0 \
  {C,CXX,F}OPTFLAGS="-O3 -march=native" \
  --prefix=$HOME/local/petsc-version-options

You may also wish to change to --with-debugging=yes in the arguments to ./configure, in order to allow debugging of PETSc. The optimisation flags need changing for cross compiling or non gcc compilers. Set a different prefix to change the place PETSc will be installed to.

Note

If you build BOUT++ using a standalone version of SUNDIALS, it is advisable to not also build PETSc with SUNDIALS.

Note

It is also possible to get PETSc to download and install MUMPS, by adding:

--download-mumps \
--download-scalapack \
--download-blacs \
--download-fblaslapack=1 \
--download-parmetis \
--download-ptscotch \
--download-metis

to ./configure.

To make PETSc type what is shown in the terminal output after the configure step, something like:

$ make PETSC_DIR=$HOME/petsc-3.13.4 PETSC_ARCH=arch-linux2-cxx-debug all

Should BLAS, LAPACK, or any other packages be missing, you will get an error, and a suggestion that you can append --download-name-of-package to the ./configure line.

You may want to test that everything is configured properly. To do this replace all with test in the make command. It should be something like:

$ make PETSC_DIR=$HOME/petsc-3.13.4 PETSC_ARCH=arch-linux2-cxx-debug test

To install PETSc, replace test/all with install and run something like:

$ make PETSC_DIR=$HOME/petsc-3.13.4 PETSC_ARCH=arch-linux2-cxx-debug install

To configure BOUT++ with PETSc, add to the cmake configure command:

-DBOUT_USE_PETSC=ON -DPETSC_ROOT=$HOME/local/petsc-version-options

For example like this:

$ cmake -DBOUT_USE_PETSC=ON -DPETSC_ROOT=$HOME/local/petsc-version-options

BOUT++ can also work with PETSc if it has not been installed. In this case ensure that PETSC_DIR and PETSC_ARCH are set, for example like this:

$ PETSC_DIR=/path/to/petsc PETSC_ARCH=arch-linux2-cxx-debug cmake -DBOUT_USE_PETSC=ON

LAPACK¶

BOUT++ comes with linear solvers for tridiagonal and band-diagonal systems. Some implementations of these solvers (for example Laplacian inversion, section Laplacian inversion) use LAPACK for efficient serial performance. This does not add new features, but may be faster in some cases. LAPACK is however written in FORTRAN 77, which can cause linking headaches. To enable these routines use:

$ ./configure --with-lapack

and to specify a non-standard path:

$ ./configure --with-lapack=/path/to/lapack

MPI compilers¶

These are usually called something like mpicc and mpiCC (or mpicxx), and the configure script will look for several common names. If your compilers aren’t recognised then set them using:

$ ./configure MPICC=<your C compiler> MPICXX=<your C++ compiler>

NOTES:

On LLNL’s Grendel, mpicxx is broken. Use mpiCC instead by passing “MPICXX=mpiCC” to configure. Also need to specify this to NetCDF library by passing “CXX=mpiCC” to NetCDF configure.

Installing FFTW from source¶

If you haven’t already, create directories “install” and “local” in your home directory:

$ cd
$ mkdir install
$ mkdir local

Download the latest stable version from http://www.fftw.org/download.html into the “install” directory. At the time of writing, this was called fftw-3.3.2.tar.gz. Untar this file, and ’cd’ into the resulting directory. As with the MPI compiler, configure and install the FFTW library into $HOME/local by running:

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local
$ make
$ make install

Compiling and running under AIX¶

Most development and running of BOUT++ is done under Linux, with the occasional FreeBSD and OSX. The configuration scripts are therefore heavily tested on these architectures. IBM’s POWER architecture however runs AIX, which has some crucial differences which make compiling a pain.

Under Linux/BSD, it’s usual for a Fortran routine foo to appear under C as foo_, whilst under AIX the name is unchanged
MPI compiler scripts are usually given the names mpicc and either mpiCC or mpicxx. AIX uses mpcc and mpCC.
Like BSD, the make command isn’t compatible with GNU make, so you have to run gmake to compile everything.
The POWER architecture is big-endian, different to the little endian Intel and AMD chips. This can cause problems with binary file formats.

SUNDIALS under AIX¶

To compile SUNDIALS, use:

export CC=cc
export CXX=xlC
export F77=xlf
export OBJECT_MODE=64
./configure --prefix=$HOME/local/ --with-mpicc=mpcc --with-mpif77=mpxlf CFLAGS=-maix64

You may get an error message like

make: Not a recognized flag: w

This is because the AIX make is being used, rather than gmake. The easiest way to fix this is to make a link to gmake in your local bin directory

ln -s /usr/bin/gmake $HOME/local/bin/make

Running which make should now point to this local/bin/make, and if not then you need to make sure that your bin directory appears first in the PATH

export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH

If you see an error like this

ar: 0707-126 ../../src/sundials/sundials_math.o is not valid with the current object file mode.
        Use the -X option to specify the desired object mode.

then you need to set the environment variable OBJECT_MODE

export OBJECT_MODE=64

Configuring BOUT++, you may get the error

configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables

In that case, you can try using:

./configure CFLAGS="-maix64"

When compiling, you may see warnings:

xlC_r: 1501-216 (W) command option -64 is not recognized - passed to ld

At this point, the main BOUT++ library should compile, and you can try compiling one of the examples.

ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .NcError::NcError(NcError::Behavior)
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .NcFile::is_valid() const
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .NcError::~NcError()
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .NcFile::get_dim(const char*) const

This is probably because the NetCDF libraries are 32-bit, whilst BOUT++ has been compiled as 64-bit. You can try compiling BOUT++ as 32-bit

export OBJECT_MODE=32
./configure CFLAGS="-maix32"
gmake

If you still get undefined symbols, then go back to 64-bit, and edit make.config, replacing -lnetcdf_c++ with -lnetcdf64_c++, and -lnetcdf with -lnetcdf64. This can be done by running

sed 's/netcdf/netcdf64/g' make.config > make.config.new
mv make.config.new make.config

Compiling on Windows¶

It is possible to compile BOUT++ on Windows using the CMake interface. Support is currently very experimental, and some features do not work. Testing has been done with MSVC 19.24 and Visual Studio 16.4, although previous versions may still work.

The main difficulty of using BOUT++ on Windows is getting the dependencies sorted. The easiest way to install dependencies on Windows is using vcpkg. You may need to set the CMake toolchain file if calling cmake from PowerShell, or on older versions of Visual Studio. This will be a file somewhere like C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

The minimal required CMake options are as follows:

-DBOUT_ENABLE_BACKTRACE=OFF \
-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="/permissive- /EHsc /bigobj" \
-DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF

ENABLE_BACKTRACE must be turned off due to the currently required addr2line executable not being available on Windows.

The following flags for the MSVC compiler are required:

/permissive- for standards compliance, such as treating the binary operator alternative tokens (and, or, etc) as tokens
/EHsc for standard C++ exception handling, and to assume that extern "C" functions never throw
/bigobj to increase the number of sections in the .obj file, required for the template-heavy derivatives machinery

No modification to the source has been done to export the correct symbols for shared libraries on Windows, so you must either specifiy -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF to only build static libraries, or, if you really want shared libraries, -DCMAKE_WINDOWS_EXPORT_ALL_SYMBOLS=ON. The latter is untested, use at your own risk!

The unit tests should all pass, but most of the integrated tests will not run work out of the box yet as Windows doesn’t understand shabangs. That is, without a file extension, it doesn’t know what program to use to run runtest. The majority of the tests can be run manually with python.exe runtest. You will stil need to set PYTHONPATH and have a suitable Python environment.

Issues¶

Wrong install script¶

Before installing, make sure the correct version of install is being used by running:

$ which install

This should point to a system directory like /usr/bin/install. Sometimes when IDL has been installed, this points to the IDL install (e.g. something like /usr/common/usg/idl/idl70/bin/install on Franklin). A quick way to fix this is to create a link from your local bin to the system install:

$ ln -s /usr/bin/install $HOME/local/bin/

“which install” should now print the install in your local bin directory.

Compiling cvode.cxx fails¶

Occasionally compiling the CVODE solver interface will fail with an error similar to:

cvode.cxx: In member function ‘virtual int CvodeSolver::init(rhsfunc, bool, int, BoutR...
cvode.cxx:234:56: error: invalid conversion from ‘int (*)(CVINT...
...

This is caused by different sizes of ints used in different versions of the CVODE library. The configure script tries to determine the correct type to use, but may fail in unusual circumstances. To fix, edit src/solver/impls/cvode/cvode.cxx, and change line 48 from

typedef int CVODEINT;

to

typedef long CVODEINT;

Compiling with IBM xlC compiler fails¶

When using the xlC compiler, an error may occur:

variant.hpp(1568) parameter pack "Ts" was referenced but not expanded

The workaround is to change line 428 of externalpackages/mpark.variant/include/mpark/lib.hpp from:

#ifdef MPARK_TYPE_PACK_ELEMENT

to:

#ifdef CAUSES_ERROR // MPARK_TYPE_PACK_ELEMENT

This will force an alternate implementation of type_pack_element to be defined. See also https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-c-compiler/topic/501502

Compiling fails after changing branch¶

If compiling fails after changing branch, for example from master to next, with an error like the following:

$ make
Downloading mpark.variant
You need to run this command from the toplevel of the working tree.
make[2]: *** [BOUT-dev/externalpackages/mpark.variant/include/mpark/variant.hpp] Error 1
make[1]: *** [field] Error 2
make: *** [src] Error 2

it’s possible something has gone wrong with the submodules. To fix, just run make submodules:

$ make submodules
Downloading mpark.variant
git submodule update --init --recursive /home/peter/Codes/BOUT-dev/externalpackages/mpark.variant
Submodule path 'externalpackages/mpark.variant': checked out '0b488da9bebac980e7ba0e158a959c956a449676'

If you regularly work on two different branches and need to run make submodules a lot, you may consider telling git to automatically update the submodules:

git config submodule.recurse=true

This requires git >= 2.14.