amit112amit / fedora-fenics

Scripts to install DOLFIN, MSHR and PETSc from source on Fedora 32

Install fenicproject.org's dolfin and mshr from source on Fedora 32

Aim:

To build dolfin and mshr on Fedora 32 with as many optional dependencies as possible.

1. HDF5 (with MPI support)
2. MPI
3. ParMETIS
4. PETSc
5. SCOTCH and PT-SCOTCH
6. SLEPc
7. Suitesparse
8. Trilinos We will not include Trilinos
9. petsc4py
10. slepc4py

Description:

The main challenge is to install PETSc from source. We cannot use the PETSc available from Fedora 32 repository because, SLEPc is not available in Fedora repositories and building SLEPc against the PETSc from the repositories requires a lot of patchwork. It is much easier to build SLEPc against a manually installed PETSc. PETSc installer can also install a bunch of other libraries for us -- HYPRE, METIS, MUMPS, PARMETIS, PTSCOTCH, SCALAPACK and SUITESPARSE. We will make an optimized build without debugging symbols.

There are two script files provided:

1. build_from_git.sh: We will clone the git repositories and checkout the latest released tags for PETSc and SLEPc. Then we will use ./configure, make and make check to build and install PETSc and SLEPc. We will use pip3 to install petsc4py and slepc4py against the built versions of PETSc and SLEPc.
2. build_from_pip.sh: PETSc and SLEPc are also available through PyPi. In fact, the build system for these packages are written in Python. So we will use pip3 to install both PETSc and SLEPc. Rest of the steps are same as in the other script. When pip installs petsc it takes a long time (~30 minutes on my laptop) without significant progress markers. So please be patient.

How to use these scripts?

I recommend using a fedora-toolbox container where we can freely mess up our root filesystem without risking our operating system.

sudo dnf install toolbox
toolbox create -c dolfin # Use whatever name you like instead of dolfin
toolbox enter -c dolfin

git clone https://github.com/amit112amit/fedora-fenics.git

cd fedora-fenics
chmod +x *.sh
sudo ./build_with_git.sh # Or ./build_with_pip.sh

# Finally change the ownerhship of the files in dolfin and mshr folder
sudo chown -R "$UID:${GROUPS[0]}" dolfin mshr

To use dolfin we will have to exit by exit and then re-enter the container by toolbox enter -c dolfin.