Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

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salad

Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by salad »

Hi,

Thanks to your help and I just finished a new post

Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Please read and any comments are expected.

Many thanks.

Best regards,

Wayne
 
http://code-saturne.blogspot.com/
David Monfort

Re: Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by David Monfort »

Back again... sorry for being a bit late ;)

Herebelow are some (not many) comments.
 
1. MED dependency
MED >= 2.3.4 headers not found
compatible MED headers not found

The warning echoed by the configure script is not an issue. As written in a different thread, MED headers changed between 2.3.1 and 2.3.4 versions; so we handle them differently. This doesn't mean you cannot use MED < 2.3.4 (actually the minimum requirement must be 2.3.0 IIRC, even if I'm not sure this version has ever been released), what Code_Saturne is only indeed a MED 2.3 mesh format.

Related comment on HDF5 installation, I would recommend to use libhdf5-serial instead of the different MPI versions, except if needed. Everything will still work and you will avoid some difficulties.

2. METIS installation
We can actually change the function name 'log2' to 'ilog2' in the related head files and source codes under the directory, Lib.
Indeed, it is annoying to install due to prototypes redefinition, non-standard directories installation, ... You can avoid it by installing the SCOTCH library (perhaps a bit less performant for many-processus calculation, but sufficient for standard ones), or use the internal partioner (based on a Space-Filling Curve algorithm, good-enough for few-processus calculation e.g. several-core mono-processor computer).

3. MEI installation
MEI is now compulsory to be prepared for the compilation of ncs.
No. Only if you want to use "fonction definition" in the graphical interface... so strongly adviced!
sudo apt-get install bison flex
Not needed anymore in version 2.0-rc1 as we moved bison/flex use from the compilation stage to the boostrap stage. This will only be needed if you want to change the parser/lexer of MEI as you'll need to bootstrap MEI to modify the generated C sources accordingly. No "standard" user is going to do that ;)
Note that explicitly specifying --with-bft=/usr/local is necessary for Python to find bft.
This part might only be needed because of the installation in /usr/local. This seems not to be needed if you install it in /usr... To be confirmed.

4. Other stuff...
Probably one has to re-create his study and case configurations again with 2.0-rc1...
Indeed, this is a good advice. We try to keep some compatibility between the versions, but generally not during the development stage. Let's say that, starting from the release candidate, the Fortran routines API and the XML files compatibility should be ensured; i.e. versions 2.0-rc1, 2.0-rcX (if needed), 2.0.0, 2.0.1, ... should be compatible.
Last but not least, I tried to 'apt-get install code_saturne' because I know Code_Saturne is already in Debian "unstable" depository
At the moment, the code-saturne package is only available in Debian testing. It means it will make it for the future Debian "Squeeze" stable release, but not for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as the feature freeze was before the entering of our package in Debian testing...

The apt-get command will be: apt-get install code-saturne. The package currenly miss MPI support (this will hopefully be corrected before final release).

David
salad

Re: Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by salad »

Good to read your comments again. I tried to say what I experienced, apparently, and you let me know deeper than that.

For those you mentioned I will test and update the post accordingly.

As noticing the network traffic to my blog, visitors on SALOME are always more than on Code_Saturne. Recently, a post on OpenFOAM, written two months ago, rapidly exceeded the SALOME posts to become the top popular post of my blog.

I am thinking what we can do to improve the situation further. How can we let more people know and use Code_Saturne?

Wayne
David Monfort

Re: Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by David Monfort »

Very kind of you to help Code_Saturne take over the CFD world ;-)

Long story, short story... One "drawback" of Code_Saturne in comparison of OpenFOAM is that Code_Saturne was (is ?) in French. Part of the documentation is still in French, and the user files were in French before version 2.0-rc1. Seemingly, the source code is still mostly in French (I mean the solver part, in Fortran). So I think this is somewhate difficult for a non-french speaker to take in hand the code. But this is something we try to improve (documentation and translation).

The rest is more a matter of advertising !

You may have a look at the following websites to hear of Code_Saturne :
- the University of Manchester Code_Saturne's dedicated wiki (no direct link with EDF, but you might know this one ;))
- the PRACE project which aims at defining the next-gen European supercomputer centres, in which Code_Saturne has been chose as one of the benchmark codes for future HPC facilities

Any idea to help disseminating the code will be welcome !
salad

Re: Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by salad »

Thanks for your explanations.

I hope the users who are going to use OpenFOAM and attracted to my blog, at least, see there is another option, Code_Saturne. There are tens of these visitors everyday. Seemingly, it is a good idea to write something about OpenFOAM. ;)

I am glad to see the user routine FORTRAN code files are turning to English. After all, they are the thing users will be working with everyday. As the translation from French to English, have you received contributions from the community before, or the community is still immature?

I guess installation is also a pain. We compiled source code of software on Linux years ago, but now we prefer to use package management to install software instead. The latter way is easier, at least for most people including myself. However, I also remember there was a discussion on a similar issue on the SALOME forum

http://www.salome-platform.org/forum/fo ... #506180280

I guess the installation of Saturne wouldn't get such troubles, would it?

If there is a way to contribute to the work packing Code_Saturne into deb packages, I would like to know.

Currently I can only write posts to contribute, if the contribution could be maximised, advices are welcome.
David Monfort

Re: Installation of Code_Saturne 2.0-rc1 on Ubuntu 9.10

Post by David Monfort »

The subroutines translation comes mostly from EDF developpers, though we got some help from people of the University of Manchester for some messages output in the code (translated in a previous version). But if someone in the community wants to help, she / he will be most welcome ! Equally, if someone is interested in translating Code_Saturne messages in a different language, she / he can have a look at the fr.po files (French dictionnary) and submit a new translation.

Code_Saturne used to be more difficult to install / package because of the way we were defining directories (I mean in place like SALOME). We decided to go for a more standard handling of installation directories (the so-called Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) and Sylvestre Ledru (many thanks !) did a really good a job in packaging the code for Debian, so now we don't really need help anymore on this side ;)

Writing posts is already a nice contribution ;) I could imagine that, following the path we chose to create Debian packages, someone could try to package the code to other build systems -- notably rpms for Fedora or OpenSUSE or ... (note that Gentoo and FreeBSD are already handled, at least partially). Porting to Windows could be imagined... perhaps a difficult task though. And apart from installation stuff, writing tutorials would also be much appreciated (but you already did so ;)).
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