Some suggestions and details I would like to add to the Windows Installing instructions of Nektar++
******************* This email originates from outside Imperial. Do not click on links and attachments unless you recognise the sender. If you trust the sender, add them to your safe senders list https://spam.ic.ac.uk/SpamConsole/Senders.aspx to disable email stamping for this address. ******************* Hello, I have recently downloaded Nektar++ on my windows computer, and I would say it is the most "difficult to install" software I have ever downloaded, the instruction for the installing process for Linux was unclear so I gave up (I used Ubuntu focal), if you could record the process and post it on YouTube it would be very helpful, there is one on YouTube but it does not seem to be official instruction. Fortunately, the software is available on Windows so I tried to follow your instruction, it was difficult as well, but still manageable. There are some details not mentioned in the instruction (like the use of git and how to call Visual Studio in the command prompt), I have attached a file to explain them.
******************* This email originates from outside Imperial. Do not click on links and attachments unless you recognise the sender. If you trust the sender, add them to your safe senders list https://spam.ic.ac.uk/SpamConsole/Senders.aspx to disable email stamping for this address. ******************* And I think our time should be spend more on using the software rather than figuring out how to install it, which has frustrated me for 3 days. If you could make a "Install.exe" file or something like that to make it easier, it would be better. ________________________________ From: Mo, Haifan Sent: 06 May 2022 6:55 AM To: nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk <nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk> Subject: Some suggestions and details I would like to add to the Windows Installing instructions of Nektar++ Hello, I have recently downloaded Nektar++ on my windows computer, and I would say it is the most "difficult to install" software I have ever downloaded, the instruction for the installing process for Linux was unclear so I gave up (I used Ubuntu focal), if you could record the process and post it on YouTube it would be very helpful, there is one on YouTube but it does not seem to be official instruction. Fortunately, the software is available on Windows so I tried to follow your instruction, it was difficult as well, but still manageable. There are some details not mentioned in the instruction (like the use of git and how to call Visual Studio in the command prompt), I have attached a file to explain them.
Dear Haifan, Thanks for posting to the Nektar++ list. We welcome your feedback and it’s useful to hear about your experiences. I wanted to provide some responses to the points you’ve made and also to highlight both some of the challenges we face in supporting installation across a wide range of different platforms but also signpost some of the different resources and documents that may help others encountering installation issues. I think the main point to highlight here is that we do our best to ensure that Nektar++ can be successfully built and installed across all three main operating system platforms - Linux, macOS and Windows. However, this is a major challenge that is complicated further by Nektar++’s nature as a piece of scientific software that has many optional third-party dependencies that we use to support specific computational and research requirements across different user communities. This is much easier to manage on Linux, and to some extent macOS, where most of these third-party libraries are available as package dependencies. Even in this case, trying to support and simplify installation across a range of Linux distributions with many different versions of dependencies is challenging. On Windows I would agree that things are rather more complicated. We have been working to provide installation packages but there are still third-party dependencies that will need to be manually installed and such packages will still generally target only the most basic installation configuration without any optional third-party libraries involved. This is fine for testing but often of limited use to researchers wanting to undertake large-scale, multi-core simulations that make use of many third-party libraries that enable important performance optimisations. Generally, our experience has been that Linux is the easiest platform to install Nektar++ on (and Ubuntu Focal is widely tested and used) so I’d be very interested to understand more about the challenges you faced when trying to install on Ubuntu. On the other hand, I would accept that Windows can be the more challenging operating system to install on, although we’ve tried to provide details and advice for this in order to make things more straightforward. Linux Packages At present, we build Linux packages for a range of Linux distributions which we make available with each release of Nektar++. These should be straightforward to install and avoid the need to build from source code. We provide packages for a basic build of Nektar++ and also for a build with a large number of third-party dependencies included. Details of the Linux packages are shown on the installation page: https://www.nektar.info/getting-started/installation/#binary <https://www.nektar.info/getting-started/installation/#binary> Docker image If you have Docker installed, you can pull and run a Nektar++ docker image which will put you straight into a shell environment where Nektar++ is pre-installed and ready to run. This may not be ideal for running real-world large-scale simulations but it’s great for testing and familiarising yourself with Nektar++. See https://www.nektar.info/getting-started/installation/#docker <https://www.nektar.info/getting-started/installation/#docker>. Building from source There are details on building from source in the user guide. It is, however, challenging to provide generic instructions that address all configurations on all target systems. While building from source should be straightforward on many Linux platforms, there can be issues related to local configuration. This is also one of the challenges of providing a Youtube video, as you suggest. Every system is a little different in terms of the packages installed, their versions, and local system configuration. Windows As I highlighted earlier, building on Windows has traditionally been the more challenging option. We do have a detailed blog post on installing Nektar++ on Windows 10 with MPI which may be of help to some users: https://www.nektar.info/building-and-running-nektar-in-parallel-on-windows-1... <https://www.nektar.info/building-and-running-nektar-in-parallel-on-windows-10-with-mpi/> I’m pleased to hear that you did manage to get Nektar++ to build successfully on Windows. If you’d like to investigate the issues that you faced on Ubuntu, please feel free to get in touch. Kind regards, Jeremy
On 6 May 2022, at 08:01, Mo, Haifan <haifan.mo.21@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
This email from haifan.mo.21@ucl.ac.uk <mailto:haifan.mo.21@ucl.ac.uk> originates from outside Imperial. Do not click on links and attachments unless you recognise the sender. If you trust the sender, add them to your safe senders list <https://spam.ic.ac.uk/SpamConsole/Senders.aspx> to disable email stamping for this address.
And I think our time should be spend more on using the software rather than figuring out how to install it, which has frustrated me for 3 days. If you could make a "Install.exe" file or something like that to make it easier, it would be better. From: Mo, Haifan Sent: 06 May 2022 6:55 AM To: nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk <mailto:nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk> <nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk <mailto:nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk>> Subject: Some suggestions and details I would like to add to the Windows Installing instructions of Nektar++
Hello, I have recently downloaded Nektar++ on my windows computer, and I would say it is the most "difficult to install" software I have ever downloaded, the instruction for the installing process for Linux was unclear so I gave up (I used Ubuntu focal), if you could record the process and post it on YouTube it would be very helpful, there is one on YouTube but it does not seem to be official instruction. Fortunately, the software is available on Windows so I tried to follow your instruction, it was difficult as well, but still manageable. There are some details not mentioned in the instruction (like the use of git and how to call Visual Studio in the command prompt), I have attached a file to explain them. _______________________________________________ Nektar-users mailing list Nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk <mailto:Nektar-users@imperial.ac.uk> https://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/nektar-users <https://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/nektar-users>
participants (2)
-
Jeremy Cohen
-
Mo, Haifan