View source for Building Dakota on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

The developers of Dakota provide [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/install-dakota-0 binary distributions] for Mac OS X and the CentOS (RHEL-compatible) Linux distribution.
They don't, however, provide a binary for the Ubuntu (Debian-compatible) Linux distribution,
requesting that users compile Dakota from source.
This is a [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/build-compile-source-code long and moderately difficult task],
so it may be out of reach for many Dakota users who prefer to use Ubuntu.
Additionally,
the [https://travis-ci.org Travis CI] web service that CSDMS uses for integration testing
runs Ubuntu 12.04 LTS,
so for us to test our software with Dakota,
it would be convenient to have a pre-built binary that can be easily accessed by Travis.
These are a set of notes for building Dakota from source on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.


== Instructions from the Dakota developers ==

The Dakota developers provide help for building Dakota from source.
In particular,
I followed their instructions
* for [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/linux-ubuntu-1204 handling dependencies in Ubuntu 12.04], and for
* [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/configure-compile-and-install-dakota configuring, compiling, and installing Dakota],
although, as always, the details are important,
so I'll try to be careful in explaining what I did.
I chose not to build optional features
such as OpenMPI, X Windows, and Python.


== Set up an Ubuntu VM ==

We don't have an Ubuntu test machine at CSDMS,
so I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as a VM on my iMac using [https://www.virtualbox.org/ VirtualBox].

Be sure to provide at least:
* 20 GB of hard disk space
* 2 GB of system memory

I couldn't compile the Boost library until I bumped up the base system memory. Graphics memory and acceleration aren't needed.


== Install Dependencies ==

Here are the Ubuntu packages that are both required
and are available through the package manager
(i.e., they don't need to be built from source):
* <code>libblas-dev</code> (no need to symlink ''libblas.so'' -> ''libblas.so.3'')
* <code>liblapack-dev</code> (no need to symlink ''liblapack.so'' -> ''liblapack.so.3'')
* <code>g++</code>
* <code>gfortran</code>
* <code>fort77</code>
* <code>libteuchos-dev</code> (although this lib optional, it will be built by Dakota unless it's installed)

Install these packages with <code>sudo apt-get install {package name}</code> before doing anything else.


== Build CMake ==

The version (2.8.7) of CMake provided with the Ubuntu distro is older than the version (2.8.9) recommended by the Dakota developers.
Their [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/cmake instructions] for obtaining, compiling, and installing CMake worked.


== Build Boost ==

The version (1.48) of Boost provided with the Ubuntu distro is older than the version (1.49) recommended by the Dakota developers.
Their [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/boost instructions] for obtaining, compiling, and installing Boost worked,
but it took several attempts.
I chose to install Boost along with Dakota, so my actions, which differed slightly from those in the instructions, were:

 tar xzf boost_1_49_0.tar.gz
 cd boost_1_49_0
 ./bootstrap.sh --prefix=${HOME}/dakota-6.4.0.Linux-Ubuntu.x86_64
 ./b2 -j4 install


== Build Dakota from source ==

Download the Dakota source and unpack it:

 wget https://dakota.sandia.gov/sites/default/files/distributions/public/dakota-6.4-public.src.tar.gz
 tar zxf dakota-6.4-public.src.tar.gz

Make a build directory:

 cd dakota-6.4-public.src
 mkdir build && cd build

Copy the Dakota CMake script into the build directory:

 cp ../cmake/BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake BuildDakota.cmake

I made two changes to the script. I set the Boost path:

<blockquote>
set( BOOST_ROOT "home/mpiper/dakota-6.4.0.Linux-Ubuntu.x86_64" CACHE PATH "Use non-standard Boost install" FORCE )<br>
set( Boost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS TRUE CACHE BOOL "Supress search paths other than BOOST_ROOT" FORCE )
</blockquote>

and I set the install location:

<blockquote>
set( CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX "home/mpiper/dakota-6.4.0.Linux-Ubuntu.x86_64" CACHE PATH "Path to Dakota installation" )
</blockquote>

Additional information on the Dakota CMake script can be found [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/using-builddakotatemplatecmake-script here].

Configure the build:

 cmake -C BuildDakota.cmake /home/mpiper/dakota-6.4-public.src

Compile:

 make

Test the build (this takes awhile):

 cd test && make test

Install:

 cd ..
 make install


== Run an example ==

Follow the [https://dakota.sandia.gov/content/set-environment-unix-mac-os-x instructions for setting the environment],
especially for setting the <code>PATH</code> and <code>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</code> variables.

Make sure Dakota runs:

 dakota --version

Create a working directory and copy in the '''rosen_multidim.in''' example from the Dakota distribution:

 mkdir example && cd example
 cp /path/to/Dakota/examples/users/rosen_multidim.in .

Call Dakota with:

 dakota -i rosen_multidim.in -o dakota.out &> run.log

View the output in '''dakota.out'''.


== Distribution ==

I created a tarball from the build I developed in writing this article. I placed it at

<blockquote>
http://csdms.colorado.edu/pub/tools/dakota/dakota-6.4.0.Linux-Ubuntu.x86_64.tar.gz
</blockquote>

This is intended to be an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS version of the Linux binary distribution produced by the Dakota team at https://dakota.sandia.gov/download.html.
If you use it and find problems, please let me know.
Enjoy!