2.3.2 Initial setup

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This page describes the two initial steps that must be carried out before compiling any simpatico source code. These are:

• Setting unix shell environment variables
• Running the "setup" shell script

Setting environment variables

In a unix environment, before compiling any code, you must modify the following unix environment variables:

• Add the simpatico simpatico/bin directory to the unix PATH shell environment variable (the shell command search path)
• Add the simpatico/scripts/python directory to the PYTHONPATH environment variable (the python module search path)

To do this, if you are using a bash shell, you add some variant of the following lines to your the .profile or .bash_profile file in your user home directory:

SIMPATICO_DIR=${HOME}/simpatico
export PATH=${PATH}:/${SIMPATICO_DIR}/bin
export PYTHONPATH=${PYTHONPATH}:/${SIMPATICO_DIR}/scripts/python

The value of SIMPATICO_DIR should be set to the path to the simpatico root directory. In the above fragment, as an example, it is assumed that the simpatico/ directory is a subdirectory of the users home directory.

After adding an appropriate variant of these lines to .profile or .bash_profile, log out, log back in, and then enter "echo $PATH" and "echo $PYTHONPATH" to make sure that these variables have been set correctly.

Rationale: The simpatico/bin directory is the default location for installing executable files created by the build system. This must be added to the users PATH to allow the operating system to find the executable files needed to run a simulation. The simpatico/scripts/python directory contains a python script that is used by the build system during compilation to generate information about dependencies among C++ files, as discussed in more detail here.

Setup Script

Before compiling any code, you must also run a bash script named "setup". This script is located in the simpatico/ root directory, and must be executed from this directory. After setting your working directory to the simpatico/ root directory, enter:

> ./setup

Note the dot and backslash ("./") before the name of the script. These must be included to tell the unix shell to look for a script named setup in the current working directory, rather than searching the directories listed in the PATH environment variable.

Explanation: The setup script creates default versions of a set of files that users may need to modify in order configure or extend the progam, and that are thus not stored in the repository. The script works by making copies of default file versions that are stored in the repository under slightly different file names. The setup script should only need to be invoked once, before the first time you compile.

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