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Installation Instructions for Unix Platforms

Previously to the installation of SLEPc, the system must have an appropriate version of PETSc installed. Check the Changes section for a list of SLEPc versions and their corresponding PETSc versions.

To install PETSc, the user simply sets the environment variables PETSC_DIR and PETSC_ARCH and types make. Apart of this, some customization may be necessary, see the PETSc installation documentation for details.

The installation process for SLEPc is very similar. The main steps are described next. Note that prior to this steps, optional packages must have been installed. If any of these packages is installed afterwards, recompilation is necessary. See below for details about installation of some of these packages.

  1. Unbundle the distribution file slepc.tgz with a usual command such as gunzip -c slepc.tgz | tar xvf -. This will create a directory and unpack the software there.
  2. Refer to the Patches section at the end of the Download page for available patches to the latest SLEPc release.
  3. Set the environment variable SLEPC_DIR to the full path of the SLEPc home directory, for example,
               setenv SLEPC_DIR /home/username/slepc-2.2.1
    In addition to this variable, PETSC_DIR and PETSC_ARCH must also be set correctly, the first one pointing to the PETSc home directory and the other containing the selected architecture (remember that PETSc allows several versions compiled for different architectures to coexist in the same directory tree).
  4. Edit the file ${SLEPC_DIR}/bmake/${PETSC_ARCH}/packages to indicate the local installation of optional software packages such as ARPACK. If there exists no directory named bmake/${PETSC_ARCH} for the value of ${PETSC_ARCH} you are using, then create it similar to the existing ones.
  5. In the SLEPc home directory, type
             make BOPT=g
    to build a debugging version of SLEPc, or
             make BOPT=O
    to build an optimized version of the SLEPc libraries. The flag BOPT determines what type of libraries are built (i.e., specifies compiler options). Other available alternatives are BOPT=[g_complex,O_complex] for complex numbers versions.
  6. If the installation went smoothly, then try running some test examples with the command
             make BOPT=g slepc_testexamples
    Examine the output for any obvious errors or problems.
  7. The Fortran libraries are built automatically during the installation outlined above. To compile and test the Fortran examples, use the command
             make BOPT=g slepc_testfortran

 

Installation Instructions for Windows Platforms

SLEPc can be installed also in Windows machines with a similar procedure as in the case of PETSc. Follow the instructions given in the PETSc Windows installation document.

 

Optional Software

SLEPc provides an interface to several software packages. These should be installed before installing SLEPc. These packages are not developed, maintained, or supported by the SLEPc team; we merely provide an interface to them. To integrate one of these libraries in SLEPc:

  • First install the external package following its instructions. Make sure you use the same compilers and MPI that you plan to use with PETSc/SLEPc.
  • Enable the utilization of the external software from SLEPc by editing the file ${SLEPC_DIR}/bmake/${PETSC_ARCH}/packages. For example, to use ARPACK, one would specify the following variables with the appropriate paths:

       ARPACK_INCLUDE =
       ARPACK_LIB = -L/home/slepc/soft/ARPACK -lparpack –larpack
       SLEPC_HAVE_ARPACK = -DSLEPC_HAVE_ARPACK

SLEPc currently interfaces to the following libraries:

  • ARPACK (Implicitly Restarted Arnoldi/Lanczos solver).
  • BLZPACK (Block Lanczos with selective and partial reorthogonalization).
  • PLANSO (Lanczos with partial reorthogonalization).
  • TRLAN (Dynamic Thick Restart Lanczos solver).

Additional information about these packages can be found in Appendix B of the SLEPc Users Manual.