Installation

How to Get Quantities

Download the code of Quantities from the sourceforge web site through project Quantity, where both packages and cvs development code are provided.

The packages represent complete stages of the software development. After installation they should work without major problems, although these can never be excluded totally.

The cvs code is under development. New versions are uploaded frequently. Although it does contain additional features, it must also be expected that there are major bugs. Thus, the cvs code should only be downloaded by experienced users. Please report any bugs that you find to the author.

For both, packages and cvs code, you will need the Quantities and the BSUtilities software. The latter does provide some basic utility functions.

Prerequisites for the Installation

Quantities was developed with gcc version 3.2 or later. The use of the gcc compiler for installation of Quantities is recommended. More recent versions of the compiler may be needed. The current version of Quantities was used with gcc up to version 4.3.2.

You need the Boost library, which is included in most modern Linux installations. Sometimes this library is located in a standard directory (e.g. /usr/include). However, you may have it installed in a different place on your file system. You will have to define the location of your Boost library and header files as discussed below. Various versions starting with 1.33.1 up to 1.34.1 were used successfully for the development of Quantities. Boost version 1.35.0 fails to compile with the code, and produces `multiple definition' errors, when more than one export header is included. Version 1.34.1. is recommended.

At least some parts of the Boost C++ library have to be installed (the filesystem, date_time, and serialization libraries are essential; add --with-libraries=filesystem,date_time,serialization to the configure flags if you compile Boost from source; note that other software that uses Quantities may need additional Boost libraries).

You need to have installed A. Alexandrescu's Loki library. Versions up to 0.1.7 were used for development. Make sure that you use the library (libloki) generated by the Loki make process, since the *.cpp files of the Loki code are not added to the Makefiles of Quantities (for pertinent details, see Loki README): Unpack the Loki tar-ball in a directory of your choice. Go to subdirectory loki-x.y.z (with x, y, and z denoting the Loki version) and type make. After compilation, type make install. This will install the Loki headers in /usr/include/loki, and the Loki libraries (libloki.a, libloki.so; the latter is a link to libloki.so.x.y.z) in /usr/lib. Consequently, you will need to have write permission in these directories. If this is not the case, you need to edit the Loki Makefile or Makefile.common (variable prefix).

You need the utility tools in package BSUtilities (version >= 0.6.2). Download and install this package according to the instructions given in the BSUtilities documentation.

User Installation

• Please check the Prerequisites for the Installation before!

• Download file quantities-<versionnumber>.tar.gz from http://sourceforge.net/projects/quantity into your <_download_directory_> and unpack the source:

  gunzip quantities-<versionnumber>.tar.gz
  tar xf quantities-<versionnumber>.tar
  

  The distribution source will then reside in <_download_directory_>/quantities_<versionnumber>. In the following, this is the <_source_directory_>.
• or, check out the cvs source code from here and read section quantitiesInstallationDeveloperInstallation below before continuing.
• Go to the source directory with

  cd quantities-<versionnumber>
  

  where you substitute <versionnumber> by the version number.
• Configure, compile and install the package:
  
  

  1. ./configure <options>
     

     
     some options are noted here:
     
     
     • --prefix=<_install_directory_> (recommended) to choose an installation directory (default is /usr/local, which can only be used if you have root privileges). Although it is possible to fine tune the places where various pieces of Quantities are installed, it is advised not to change other directory information than `prefix'.
     • --with-loki=<_loki_directory_> (mandatory) to specify the path to the loki installation - this directory should contain subdirectories include/loki and, in subdirectory lib a file named libloki.so; default is /usr.
     • --with-boost=<_boost_directory_> (recommended) to specify the path to the boost installation, where a subdirectory include/boost or include/boost-<version>/boost exists with a file version.hpp, and at least libboost_filesystem<tag>.so is present in subdirectory lib; this option is particularly useful if there are several boost installations available. There is no simple default value. Rather the configure process checks for the boost installation in various standardized places if --with-boost is not given.
     • --with-BSUtilities=<_BSUtilities_install_directory_> (mandatory) to specify the path to the BSUtilities installation; default is /usr/local.
     • --with-BSUtilities_version=<versionnumber> (optional) to specify the BSUtilities version number; default is presently 0.6.2.
     • --with-BSUtilities_libtag=<libtag> (optional) to specify the libtag of the BSUtilities library to be used. Note that the respective library must be present in <BSUtilities_install_directory>/lib/BSUtilities-<versionnumber><libtag>; default is <empty>.
     • --enable-debug (optional) to build the libraries and tests with debug information; default is not to build debugging code. If debug information is enabled, -d is appended to the subdirectory into which libraries are installed.
     • --enable-optimize (optional) to build the libraries and tests with optimized code; default is not to build optimized code. If optimization is enabled, -o is appended to the subdirectory into which libraries are installed.
     • --disable-Werror (optional) to build the libraries and tests without the -Werror option supplied to the compiler; default is to use the -Werror option, which is strongly recommended for developers); this results in treating warnings during compilation as errors.
     • --enable-staticTestProgs (optional) to build the tests as static executables; default is to build dynamically linked tests.
       
       
     Note, that for each --enable-xxx option, a corresponding --disable-xxx option exists (and vice versa), which causes reverse behavior.
     
     The standard procedure generates and installs both shared and non-shared (static) libraries. If you ever want to generate shared or static libraries alone, use the --enable-shared, --enable-static, --disable-shared, and/or --disable-static options to the configure command.
     
     type

     ./configure --help
     

     
     for more options, or check the INSTALL file.
     
     On 64-bit systems, you must include a Boost flag

     CXXFLAGS=-DBOOST_NO_INTRINSIC_INT64_T
     

     into the configure call to avoid redefinition errors during compilation.
     
     

  2. make
     

     
     

  3. make doc
     

     
     (optional)
     
     You need an installation of the doxygen program for this, see http://www.doxygen.org. The command will invoke doxygen to generate html and latex documentation. The files are then in the respective documentation directories of the source tree. Point your browser at file:///<_source_directory_>/documentation/html/index.html .
     If you have installed the BSUtilities documentation in the respective subdirectory of the share directory, the build process should automatically generate links from the Quantities documentation to the relevant BSutilities pages.
     
     

  4. make install
     

     
     this will install the headers and libraries into the include/Quantities-<versionnumber>/xxx (xxx = Quantity, PhysicalQuantities, MathematicalQuantities, or GeneralQuantities) and lib/Quantities-<versionnumber><libtag> subdirectory trees in the installation directory specified with the --prefix option (default /usr/local), respectively, where <libtag> is either empty (neither optimization nor debug information is enabled), or a combination of -o and -d (either one or both options are enabled).
     
     

     make doc-install
     

     
     this will install the documentation files into the share/Quantities-<versionnumber> subdirectory in the installation directory specified with the --prefix option (default /usr/local).
     Point your browser at file:///<_install_directory_>/share/Quantities-<version>/documentation/html/index.html to access the full Quantities documentation.
     
     

  5. make check
     

     
     generate the test programs in subdirectories xxx/test, where xxx is Quantity, PhysicalQuantities, MathematicalQuantities, or GeneralQuantities.
     
     
  6. If necessary, to clean up the generated files, use
     
     

     make clean
     make uninstall
     

     
     where make uninstall removes files from the <_install_directory_>, while make clean removes generated files in the <_source_directory_>. The command make clean is necessary between generation of libraries with different combinations of debug and optimization options (different libtags).
     
     
  7. To clean and/or uninstall documentation files, use
     
     

     make doc-clean
     make doc-uninstall
     

     
     Note that uninstalling the documentation may leave directories in the share subdirectory tree.
     
     
  8. To purge the configuration files, use
     
     

     make distclean
     

     
     
  9. You may access on-line documentation through this link, where you can find documentation for the various releases of Quantities.
     
     
  10. Generate the test programs
      

       make check 
      

      
      The test programs are located in directories _source_directory_/xxx/test, where xxx is Quantity, PhysicalQuantities, or GeneralQuantities. The test programs are dynamically linked executables by default. If you want to generate statically linked versions, use the --enable-staticTestProgs option to configure. For further information, see Using the Test Programs.

Using the Test Programs

There are two types of test programs for Quantities:

• programs that are expected to compile correctly and to produce results upon execution that can be checked versus some reference values (run-time test programs), and
• programs that are expected to not compile correctly and produce some compile time error message compile-time test programs.

At present, there is no automatic test procedure. Consequently, the various run-time test programs have to be executed one after the other. Also, the results of the compile-time test programs have to be checked by the installer. The command

make check

will compile the run-time test programs and also attempt to compile the compile-time test programs. The latter should all fail with a compiler or linker error message.

The following test programs are available:

• run-time test programs
  • in directory _srcdir_/Quantity/test
    • QuantityDimensionTest
    • QuantityConstructionTest
    • QuantityAssignmentTest
    • QuantityArithmeticsTest
    • QuantityTest
    • QuantitySerializationTest
  • ...
• compile-time test programs
  • in directory _srcdir_/Quantity/compiletest
    • QuantityAssignmentCompileTest1
    • QuantityAssignmentCompileTest2
    • QuantityAssignmentCompileTest3
    • QuantityAssignmentCompileTest4

Developer Installation

As a developer who downloaded the cvs version of Quantities, you have to create a configure script first. Autoconf, automake, and libtool must be installed.

Run

autoreconf --install

to generate the necessary files. See also the README file in <_source_directory_>.

back to Quantities start page

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