FreeFOAM The Cross-Platform CFD Toolkit
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Table of Contents

FreeFOAM is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See the file COPYING in this directory, for a description of the GNU General Public License terms under which you can copy the files.

2. System requirements

FreeFOAM is developed and tested on Linux, but should work with other Unix style systems, notably Mac OS X ©. The support for Microsoft Windows is a goal, which, however, is still far off.

2.1. Required software to build FreeFOAM

CMake

In order to build FreeFOAM you need to have CMake with version 2.6.2 or newer installed. http://cmake.org

Build system

CMake requires a native build system. On Unix like platforms GNU Make is recommended. http://www.gnu.org/software/make

C++ compiler

In order to build FreeFOAM you need a C++ compiler with good support for template expressions. The g++ compiler from GCC-4.3 and above will do fine. http://gcc.gnu.org

flex

The flex lexer generator. Version 2.5.33 is known to work. For more recent versions there have been reports of problems. http://flex.sourceforge.net

zlib

zlib compression library. http://www.zlib.net

METIS

The METIS graph partitioning library, version 5.0pre2. If your package manager doesn’t contain it, you can also have FreeFOAM build it automatically for you (see the installation section). http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/metis/metis/overview

2.2. Optional software

git

To check out a current development version of FreeFOAM, git is required. http://git.or.cz

Parallel Communications Library

In order to run FreeFOAM in parallel, a communications library is required. The following list gives an overview of the available options:

ParMetis

If you use an MPI library, the ParMetis library is required. If your package manager doesn’t contain this library, FreeFOAM can build it automatically for you (refer to the installation notes below). http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/metis/parmetis/overview

MGRIDGEN

MGRIDGEN is a grid coarsening library for multi-grid solvers. FreeFOAM can build this automatically for you. Please refer to the INSTALL file for license restrictions. http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/mgridgen/overview

libccmio

pro-STAR © input/output library. FreeFOAM can build this automatically for you. Please refer to the INSTALL file for license restrictions. https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/visit/3rd_party/libccmio-2.6.1.tar.gz

ParaView

If you want to build the ParaView plug-ins, you need a ParaView with the development headers and the corresponding CMake configuration files (ParaViewConfig.cmake, ParaViewUse.cmake, ParaViewLibraryDepends*.cmake). Most likely this means that you have to build ParaView yourself. http://paraview.org

M4

Some of the provided tutorial cases require the M4 macro processor. http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/

Doxygen

Automatic API-documentation generator. Required to build the source documentation. http://www.doxygen.org

3. Installation

For installation and basic usage instructions, refer to the INSTALL file.

6. Reporting Bugs in FreeFOAM