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Building MYSTRAN from source

Last updated 2023-12-18.

Setting up a build environment

In order to build (compile) MYSTRAN using CMake, you first have to set up a proper build environment (i.e. toolchain and required programs/libraries).

You can skip this part if you've done it already (or if you really know what you're doing).

Steps for Windows (x86_64)

First, download and install MSYS2 from the official site.

Open the MSYS2 terminal and run the following commands:

  1. pacman -Syu This updates repository information and installed packages, and might require you close and reopen MSYS2 terminals.
  2. pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc-fortran mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-make git This installs the required compilers (the GNU C and Fortran compilers), CMake itself, and git.
  3. export PATH="/mingw64/bin:$PATH" This makes the MinGW toolchain programs (such as make and the compilers) visible so CMake can find them more easily. Note that this command's effects are lost when you reopen the terminal, so you might want to append it to your ~/.bashrc to save time.

Steps for Linux (any)

Follow your distribution's steps to install the following programs/libraries:

  • gcc
  • g++
  • gfortran
  • make
  • cmake
  • git

All of those are fairly common, so get in touch in the MYSTRAN Forums or MYSTRAN Discord if you have trouble installing any of them. Also, note that most distros have a "base" package group for developers (e.g. Arch's base-devel or Ubuntu's build-essential) that includes necessary tooling such as gcc and make. If that's the case, install it!

If your distribution doesn't ship CMake 3.18+ yet, check if your distro has a some sort of testing/unstable channel before attempting to install it manually.

For WSL (Linux for Windows)

Mystran won't work with Ubuntu 20.04, hasn't been tested on 22.04 and should work on 24.04 (what we're testing).

If you're upgrading your WSL, open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

wsl --update
wsl --install --distribution Ubuntu-24.04

Now that you've got into a modern version of Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
apt install gcc g++ gfortran make cmake git

Building MYSTRAN

If your build environment is already set up, building MYSTRAN is quite straightforward.

Steps for Windows (any)

  1. Open the MSYS2 shell.
  2. Re-run step #3 of the previous section if needed.
  3. Fetch the source code if you haven't already. If you're using Git, you can clone the repo with git clone https://github.com/MYSTRANsolver/MYSTRAN.git.
  4. Move the terminal to the MYSTRAN folder. If you've just run git clone, just do a cd MYSTRAN.
  5. Generate the build scripts by running cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
  6. Compile with mingw32-make. If you have an N-core processor, running mingw32-make -Oline -jN will probably be much faster. A good choice of N is printed in the previous step, right before the end. The -Oline argument prevents garbled output when N > 1.
  7. The executable will reside at Binaries/mystran.exe.

Steps for Linux (any)

  1. Open a terminal.
  2. Fetch the source code if you haven't already. If you're using Git, you can clone the repo with git clone https://github.com/MYSTRANsolver/MYSTRAN.git.
  3. Move the terminal to the MYSTRAN folder. If you've just run git clone, just do a cd MYSTRAN.
  4. Generate the build scripts by running cmake ..
  5. Compile with make. If you have an N-core processor, running make -jN will probably me much faster. A good choice of N is printed in the previous step, right before the end. You can also find the number of cores/threads with the nproc command (not all distros ship it out-of-the-box though).
  6. The executable will reside at Binaries/mystran.

Troubleshooting

While this process is meant to be straightforward, here is a list of some of the more common issues that can arise. Other issues users find might be added here if they're not too specific.

If your issue isn't here, you can always ask for help at the MYSTRAN forums or the Discord server

"I'm getting "file not found" errors when running the step #2 setup command!"

Run a pacman -Syyu (note the two 'y's) and try again.

"CMake is complaining about not being able to find the toolchain or the Fortran compiler or the "make" command!"

Try running the commands make/mingw32-make, gcc, and gfortran. If any of these comes up as a "command not found", make sure they've been installed. If you're sure they are, they might not be in the PATH.

Windows users, have a look at step #3 of the setup. Linux users, check out your distro documentation, because whatever's happening should not be happening at all.

"CMake complains about ARCHIVE_EXTRACT!"

Check out the output of cmake --version. You must have version 3.18 or newer. If you don't, first ensure it's up to date -- perform a system-wide update. Windows users should not find this issue relevant -- MSYS2 ships CMake 3.27.1 as of this writing. Linux users should use their own package manager.

If your system is up to date and you still run into this issue, that means your distro ships CMake 3.17 or older. Bad luck there. Here's what you can do:

  1. Enable a testing/unstable package channel (not all distros have one)
  2. Install the latest CMake manually (might piss off your package manager)
  3. Download and extract libf2c.zip yourself, and comment out the ARCHIVE_EXTRACT stuff in CMakeLists.txt.

"I'm getting random SuperLU build errors!"

SuperLU is included as a submodule. A recent update to the submodule might require a clean build. Run make clean and delete the superlu subdirectory and run the appropriate cmake command again.

"I'm getting cryptic linker errors related to BLAS!"

SuperLU requires BLAS. Its build script can look for and link against your system's installed BLAS implementation (we recommend OpenBLAS). However, your install might be lacking the appropriate static (.a) library files.

If you don't know how to fix that and just want to build, you can use the integrated BLAS subroutines bundled with the SuperLU source. To do that, run the appropriate cmake command with the extra option -Denable_internal_blaslib=YES before the . argument.

Please be aware that the bundled CBLAS might be slow when compared to a proper BLAS install. That might have an impact on the time it takes to run larger models.

"I want to build offline, but the CMake script attempts to download stuff!"

Download the superlu submodule and libf2c.zip beforehand, and you should be fine.

"The terminal output is garbled during compilation!"

Multiple threads are printing to standard output simultaneously. That issue can sometimes happen as a result of running make instead of mingw32-make on Windows, but it can affect both. It's annoying, but harmless.

However, if you really need compiler output to be readable, ensure make only runs with one thread by passing the option -j1. This will make compilation slower, but at least you'll be able to read the output.

And if it's errors you're looking for, you can build fast with -j[number], and then -j1 just to see the error again.

If your issue isn't here, you can always ask for help at the MYSTRAN forums or the Discord server