Case Study: Installation of the dealii, a C++ program library

[bdu-birhanu]

What would you like to see added?

deal.II Installation Experience

Installation Instructions in the deal.II repository

The installation process began by following the instructions in the deal.II repository (https://github.com/dealii/dealii) :

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/where/dealii/should/be/installed/to /path/to/dealii/sources
$ make install    (alternatively $ make -j<N> install)
$ make test

• The installation seemed smooth until I reached the last step: make test. This command resulted in several errors (screenshots attached for reference)

Singularity as an Alternative

I switched to a containerized approach with Singularity, hoping it would work:

• Pull the latest Docker image using:
  singularity pull dealii.sif docker://dealii/dealii:latest.
• Then tried to run singularity run dealii.sif --help, this didn’t work, as no entry point or commands were provided in the documentation.
• singularity shell dealii.sif—not help, leaving me unable to proceed further.

Solutions that works

The following solution was tested using the tutorial examples (step-1) available on the deal-II GitHub page.

• Pulled other docker image using singularity:
  singularity pull dealii.sif docker://dealii/dealii:master-focal
• Clone the dealii repo using:
  git clone https://github.com/dealii/dealii
• Navigate to the example directory. For example for Step-1, use:
  cd dealii/examples/step-1
• Then , run the following commands:

singularity run $HOME/dealii.sif cmake .
singularity run $HOME/dealii.sif make
singularity run $HOME/dealii.sif make run

• These steps run successfully and produce the expected outputs as shown in the tutorial.

Takeaways

• While the official installation steps are a good starting point, real-world installations may encounter unexpected issues.
• If the standard installation approach fails, explore alternatives like Singularity.
• The Docker image version played a crucial role, if one version doesn’t work, trying another can make all the difference.