dolfin team mailing list archive

[Faheem Mitha <faheem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Anders Logg wrote:

> It shouldn't be a problem getting PETSc + DOLFIN running on
> Debian. I'm using Debian myself.

[snip]
> It can be a little tricky to get PETSc installed, since they don't 
> follow the standard configure + make. (On the other hand, they are using 
> Matt Knepley's new BuildSystem which is pretty powerful.)

I wonder why they aren't using scons.

[snip]
> Download the PETSc tarball and unpack it somewhere (I suggest you do
> it in /usr/local/lib/). Then do the following:
>
>    export PETSC_DIR=`pwd`
>    ./config/configure.py
>    make BOPT=g_c++
>    make BOPT=O_c++
>
> You might run into some difficulties along the way (like getting MPI
> set up correctly) but the PETSc configure script should help you with
> this.

This is not what I was doing. I'll try that. However, this doesn't look 
like what the Debian package is doing either.

[snip]
> When you have PETSc installed, just do
>
>    ./configure
>    make
>
> in the DOLFIN directory to compile DOLFIN. (And then an optional make
> install to install it on your system.) DOLFIN assumes that PETSc is in
> /usr/local/lib/petsc/ so either make a symlink to where you compiled
> PETSc or give the full path name with --with-petsc-dir=<path>. DOLFIN
> also assumes that you want PETSc BOPT=g_c++, so if you want to compile
> with PETSc BOPT=O_c++, use the flag --with-petsc-bopt=O_c++.

Yes, but does PETSc require the sources in order to compile, or just the 
static/shared libraries + headers?

[snip]
> It's getting ready. There will be a new version later today (or early
> next week, as soon as a new version of FIAT comes out) with many
> improvements and fixes.

What is FIAT?

> If you want to try out this version, download the latest CVS snapshot of 
> DOLFIN from

>    http://www.fenics.org/pub/software/dolfin/cvs/

Ok. Have you considered moving to Subversion (or something else) at some 
point?

> Take a look in the subdirectory src/demo/poisson/ of DOLFIN, which
> contains a simple demo program with some instructions.
>
> Things are starting to stabilize enough now for us to write a manual,
> but I can't promise that we'll have it ready until after the summer.
>
> What does Johan + Johan say? Are you willing to contribute to the
> manual?

Are you asking me?

> > Are the developers willing to answer questions about the details of the 
> > library?

> Yes, of course.

Good to know.

> > I see DOLFIN is currently using Petsc 2.2.1. However, 2.3 is the most
> > recent release, and the most recent version packaged for Debian is 2.2.0.
> > Are there any plans to switch to using 2.3 in the near future? Do you have
> > any Debian packages of more recent versions of Petsci or of DOLFIN
> > available?
>
> Yes, we will switch to 2.3 as soon as possible. I'll gladly accept any
> patches for this.

You mean patches in order for DOLFIN to work against PETSc 2.3?

> There are no Debian packages yet, but I would like to see DOLFIN (and
> the rest of the FEniCS projects) added to Debian at some point.

Well, I usually want things that I am using packaged.

I'm going to try using the preexisting packaging for Debian 2.2.0 and 
convert it to 2.2.1 (if I can). There are tools like svn-buildpackage that 
can help with this.

It seems best to stay with the current Debian packaging system, since it 
is presumably policy-compliant etc.

The question then, is whether the DOLFIN developers are willing to help 
get DOLFIN to compile against this version out of the box, which I think 
would be nice.

You said that DOLFIN would not work with the current Debian package. Is 
this just because it is out of date, or did it never work with it?

I'm tempted to try to package 2.3, but this may be harder, plus DOLFIN is 
not actually using it yet.

Packaging DOLFIN itself should be comparatively easy, since it uses a 
standard build system.

I've heard rumors that the PETSc developers are planning to integrate 
DOLFIN into PETSc for version 3. Do you know anything about this?

                                                                Faheem.