Download, Install and Run the FEMhub Distribution

You can run download and install the FEMhub Distribution easily on your local desktop. Please follow the instructions below. If you do not want to download or install anything you can use it in NCLab.

Instructions for Regular Users: Binary

Regular users or nondevelopers are encouraged to download the latest binary release for their platform. Developers should follow the instructions on building from sources below.

You can view a list of the binaries of all versions here. From there you can download the version you want.

If you downloaded a binary, you do not need to do anything, just extract it and you are ready to go. For example, in ubuntu machine you would do the following:

$ wget http://femhub.org/pub/femhub-0.9.10.beta2-ubuntu64.tar.gz
$ tar xzf femhub-0.9.10.beta2-ubuntu64.tar.gz

Then follow the instructions on running the FEMhub Distribution below.

Instructions for Developers: Building from Sources

You can build from sources in two ways:

(1) Build using the sources of the latest release: If you want to build the latest (stable) release from source, use the femhub-*.tar file (not tar.gz, those are binaries), as explained below for each platform. You can get the tarball of sources here. The most recent stable version is femhub-0.9.9 but you can try our latest beta version which contains the new version of the online lab.

(2) Build using the git repository: If you use git, then instead of downloading the tarball of sources and building it, you can use the latest development version (which might contain bugs) available in our git repository.

Building in Linux Distributions

Build using the sources of the latest release (change the version 0.9.9 below to the version of the latest release, which you can find here):

To download the sources you can use the following command in Ubuntu Linux:

$ wget http://femhub.org/pub/femhub-0.9.10.beta1.tar

After you download the sources, please read below on how to build FEMhub and work around common issues:

1. Make sure you have the dependencies and 2GB free disk space. Install these using your package manager

gcc, g++, make, gfortran, m4, perl, and tar.

For example in Ubuntu Linux you can do

$ sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran make m4 perl tar

2. Extract the tarball:

$ tar xf femhub-0.9.10.beta1.tar

3. cd into the femhub directory and type make:

$ cd femhub-0.9.10.beta1
$ make

Note: for installing mesa (and vtk too), you need the X11 header files currently, so you also need to do:

$ sudo apt-get install libx11-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxext-dev libxt-dev

Build using the git repository:

First make sure that you have git installed in your machine, and then issue the following commands to build FEMhub:

$ git clone git@github.com:femhub/femhub-distribution.git
$ cd femhub-distribution
$ make

Building in Mac OS X

Build using the sources of the latest release (change the version 0.9.9 below to the version of the latest release, which you can find here):

You can use the following command to download the tarball of sources:

$ curl -O http://femhub.org/pub/femhub-0.9.9.tar
  1. Make sure you have the dependencies and 2GB free disk space.

Google “download Xcode”. You have to register as Apple Developer (yes, you gotta believe). Do not pay any fees, they may offer you access to their newest updates for :math:`99 per year or more. Xcode contains make and other things that are required to build FEMhub. Then download, unpack, and build FEMhub:

WARNING: If “gcc -v” outputs 4.0.0, you must upgrade XCode (free from Apple), since that version of GCC is very broken.

2. Extract the tarball:

\` tar xf femhub-0.9.9-*.tar

3. cd into the femhub directory and type make:

$ cd femhub-0.9.9
$ make

Build using the git repository:

First make sure that you have git installed in your machine, and then issue the following commands to build FEMhub:

$ git clone git@github.com:femhub/femhub-distribution.git
$ cd femhub-distribution
$ make

Building in Microsoft Windows

Build using the sources of the latest release (change the version 0.9.9 below to the version of the latest release, which you can find here):

Make sure you have the dependencies and 2GB free disk space.

Download and install the Linux emulator Cygwin from here (the small icon in the top-right corner). While running setup.exe, you need to install

cmake, gcc4, gfortran, git, gitk, libX11-devel, libXext-devel,
libXt-devel, libXt, libXext, make, m4, openssl-devel, perl,
python, wget, xextproto.

This is a bit tedious but you have to survive it. We would like to create one package containing all of those, to facilitate the download - any help is welcome. For some packages, there will be more choices - follow the magical word GNU. Then download, unpack, and build FEMhub as in Linux:

$ wget http://femhub.org/pub/femhub-0.9.9.tar
$ tar -xf femhub-0.9.9.tar
$ cd femhub-0.9.9
$ make

Build using the git repository:

First make sure that you have git installed in your machine, and then issue the following commands to build FEMhub:

$ git clone git@github.com:femhub/femhub-distribution.git
$ cd femhub-distribution
$ make

Building in Other Operating Systems

You may try building in other operating systems and please let us know how it goes. NOTE: On some operating systems it might be necessary to install gas/as, gld/ld, gnm/nm, but on most these are automatically installed when you install the programs listed above. Only OS X >= 10.4.x and certain Linux distributions are 100% supported.

After Building Starts

After the building process starts, wait between 37 minutes to 1.5 hour depending upon the speed of your computer. Everything is automatic and non-interactive.

If you encounter problems, let us know through the FEMhub mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/femhub

If you want, you can also download a binary from here, however, if it doesn’t work for you, compile from source, that should always work.

Running FEMhub

Go the femhub top directory, and just execute

./femhub

from the command line.

$ ./femhub
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Femhub Version 0.9.9, Release Date: 2010-05-05                     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------