A Vector Field File Generator for differential equation solvers and other computational tools. Given a specification of an ordinary or delay differential equation, VFGEN can generate source code that defines the equations for a wide assortment of solvers and tools.
- Web page: https://warrenweckesser.github.io/vfgen
- License: GPL-2
- Author: Warren Weckesser
This file is in the top directory for the source code distribution of the program VFGEN. This README gives the steps necessary to build VFGEN from the source code. Before building from source, check the web page https://warrenweckesser.github.io/vfgen; a compiled binary may be available for your system.
Before you can build VFGEN, you must have installed these libraries:
- GiNaC (http://www.ginac.de)
- Mini-XML 3.x, but not 4.x (http://www.minixml.org)
If you are using Linux, binary packages (.deb and .rpm) are available for these libraries. Check your standard repositories. Be sure you install the "development" versions of the packages. In Debian-based systems, these usually end with -dev. Note that GiNaC depends on the arbitrary precision numerical library CLN, so you will also have to install CLN.
Also be sure you have pkg-config (https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/) installed. Most Linux systems have pkg-config available as a binary package.
There are three methods that you can use to build the program: CMake, configure (i.e. the autotools script), or plain old Make. These are discussed below.
CMake
CMake (http://www.cmake.org/) is a platform-independent build tool. To build VFGEN with CMake, you must have CMake installed, and you must have the GiNaC (http://www.ginac.de/) and Mini-XML (http://www.easysw.com/~mike/mxml/) libraries installed. (If you are using a debian-based Linux distribution, packages for these libraries are available.) If these libraries are installed in either /usr or /usr/local, the following commands (run in the top directory) will build VFGEN:
$ cd cmake_build
$ cmake ../src
$ make
If the libraries are installed in some other location, define the environment
variables CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH and CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH before running cmake.
By default, the command
$ make install
will install the executable file in /usr/local/bin. To change the
installation directory, set the environment variable CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
before running cmake. Then make install will install the executable file
in $(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX)/bin.
configure (i.e. autotools)
VFGEN also comes with a "configure" script. The simplest way to use this script is the following sequence of commands in the top directory:
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install
This will install the vfgen executable in /usr/local/bin. You may change the
installation directory with the --prefix option to the ./configure command,
e.g.
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt
$ make
$ make install
This will put the vfgen executable in /opt/bin.
The configure script has several other options. They may be listed with the command
$ ./configure --help
Plain old Makefile
If you are using Linux (or some other Unix-like system), you have the GNU C++
compiler installed (g++), you have the program pkg-config installed, and you
have installed GiNaC and Mini-XML, you can use the file Makefile.vfgen to
build the program:
$ cd src
$ make -f Makefile.vfgen
GiNaC version 1.3.4, and Mini-XML version 2.3 (and later versions) provide the appropriate files to work with pkg-config; I'm not sure if older versions do.
The file Makefile.vfgen is a very simple Makefile; for example, there is
no install target. Besides the default vfgen target, the only other
target of interest is clean; make clean will remove all the .o files.
Building from version control source
The code under version control does not include the configure script.
To create the configure script:
$ aclocal
$ automake --add-missing
$ autoconf
Some additional options may be necessary. On a Mac running OS X 10.9.5, with pkg-config installed in /usr/local, aclocal might have to run as
$ aclocal -I /usr/local/share/aclocal