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This section goes into more detail about how to build and install the ESMF software.
Major releases of the ESMF software can be downloaded by following the instructions on the the Download link on the ESMF website, http://www.earthsystemmodeling.org.
The ESMF is distributed as a full source code tree. Follow the instructions in the following sections to build the library and link it with your application.
Users aware of these risks may check out development snapshots using the appropriate git tag.
Starting with ESMF 8.3.0 beta snapshot 07, the naming convention for development tags has the form:
v<VERSION>b<NUMBER>
For example:
v8.3.0b07
Prior to this version, the tag naming convention for development tags is:
ESMF_<VERSION>_beta_snapshot_<NUMBER>
For example:
ESMF_8_2_0_beta_snapshot_23
Use the following example command as a guide to check out a specific development tag:
git clone https://github.com/esmf-org/esmf.git --branch v8.3.0b13 --depth 1
Once downloaded, development snapshots are built in the same way as releases.
The following compilers and utilities are required for compiling, linking and testing the ESMF software. It is good common practice to use a consistent set of Fortran/C++/C compilers from the same vendor, e.g. GNU, Intel, etc. However, some vendor combinations of Fortran, C++, and C compilers, e.g. Intel ifort with GNU g++, are also supported.
Internal packages that can optionally reference external libraries:
Optional external packages that must be specified for certain functions:
ESMF can be built using a single-processor MPI-bypass library that comes with ESMF by setting ESMF_COMM=mpiuni. This allows ESMF applications to be linked and run in single-process mode.
In order to build html and pdf versions of the ESMF documentation, LATEX, the latex2html conversion utility, and the Unix/Linux dvipdf utility must be installed. The csh shell is also required to complete the documentation build.
Some portions of the ESMF library can offer enhanced capabilities when certain third party libraries are available. This section describes these dependencies and the associated environment settings that allow the user to control them.
On many platforms, the ESMF library is also created as a shared library. When third party libraries are called from ESMF, it is recommended that they are also available as shared libraries. In cases where they are not, they should at least be compiled with the position independent code option enabled (e.g., -fPIC on Linux with gfortran/gcc) where necessary, so that the ESMF shared library build can successfully incorporate them.
The following environment variables control whether a minimal set of LAPACK code that comes with ESMF is used, or whether ESMF should link against an externally available LAPACK installation. Alternatively, ESMF's LAPACK-dependent features can be turned off altogether.
Specifies the path where the LAPACK library is located.
Specifies the linker directive needed to link the LAPACK library to the application. On some systems, the BLAS library must also be included.
Beginning with NetCDF 4.2, the C and Fortran API libraries are released as separate packages. To compile ESMF with NetCDF 4.2 and newer releases, the ESMF_NETCDF environment variable can be set to "split". The "split" option requires the NetCDF C library, and the NetCDF Fortran API library be installed in the same directory. As an alternative, the "nc-config" option may be used to automatically determine the include and lib directory locations. The "nc-config" option supports separate C and Fortran directories.
The following environment variables enable, and specify the name and location of the desired NetCDF library and associated header files:
Specifies the path where the NetCDF header files are located.
Specifies the path where the NetCDF library file is located.
Specifies the linker directives needed to link the NetCDF library to the application.
The default value depends on the setting of ESMF_NETCDF. For the typical case where ESMF_NETCDF is set to "standard", ESMF_NETCDF_LIBS is set to "-lnetcdf". When ESMF_NETCDF is set to "split", ESMF_NETCDF_LIBS is set to "-lnetcdff -lnetcdf".
If the hdf5 library is required, append "-lhdf5_hl -lhdf5" to the desired setting. E.g. "-lnetcdff -lnetcdf -lhdf5_hl -lhdf5"
Some file systems, for example Lustre, may need to have locking attributes enabled when the file system is mounted.
The following environment variables enable and specify the name and location of the desired Parallel-NetCDF library and associated header files:
When defined, enables the use of Parallel-NetCDF.
Specifies the path where the Parallel-NetCDF header files are located.
Specifies the path where the Parallel-NetCDF library file is located.
Specifies the linker directives needed to link the Parallel-NetCDF library to the application.
The PIO code depends on MPI I/O support by the underlying MPI implementation for parallel I/O. Almost all current MPI implementations support MPI I/O to the required degree. For NetCDF format support the integrated PIO code depends on ESMF_NETCDF (see 9.4.2) being enabled and optionally ESMF_PNETCDF (see 9.4.3) being enabled.
Specifies the path where the PIO header files are located.
Specifies the path where the PIO library is located.
The following environment variables enable, and specify the name and location of the desired accelerator software stacks and associated header files:
Specifies the path where the header files for the accelerator software stack is located. If not set, this environment variable is ignored.
Specifies the path where the libraries for the accelerator software stack is located. If not set, this environment variable is ignored.
Specifies the linker directives required to link the library with the accelerator software stack. If not set, this environment variable is ignored.
Specifies the path where the XERCES C++ header files are located.
Specifies the path where the XERCES C++ library file is located.
Specifies the linker directives needed to link the XERCES C++ library to the application.
The default value depends on the setting of ESMF_XERCES. For the typical case where ESMF_XERCES is set to "standard", ESMF_XERCES_LIBS is set to "-lxerces-c".
ESMF includes the option to build the yaml-cpp from sources kept inside the ESMF source tree, or to link against an external build of the yaml-cpp library. The following environment variables control the details of how ESMF interacts with yaml-cpp:
Specifies the path where the yaml-cpp C++ header files are located.
Specifies the path where the yaml-cpp C++ library file is located.
Specifies the linker directives needed to link the yaml-cpp C++ library to the application.
The default value depends on the setting of ESMF_YAMLCPP. For the typical case where ESMF_YAMLCPP is set to "standard", ESMF_YAMLCPP_LIBS is set to "-lyaml-cpp".
The Mesh Oriented datABase (MOAB) can be used to build an ESMF unstructured Mesh as an alternative to the "native" ESMF Mesh implementation. The decision to use either MOAB or the native ESMF Mesh implementation is made at run time. This aspect is described in the Reference Manual, section ESMF_MeshSetMOAB() .The default is to use the native ESMF Mesh. ESMF will build an internal version of MOAB by default, but an external MOAB installation can be used if desired. The build parameters covered in this section are used to determine which version of MOAB is available to ESMF.
Specifies the path where the MOAB C++ header files are located.
Specifies the path where the MOAB C++ library file is located.
Specifies the linker directives needed to link the MOAB C++ library to the application.
The following is a full alphabetical list of all environment variables which are used by the ESMF build system. In many cases only ESMF_DIR must be set. On Linux and Darwin systems ESMF_COMPILER and ESMF_COMM must also be set to select the appropriate Fortran and C++ compilers and MPI implementation. The other variables have default values which work for most systems.
If a system supports 32-bit and 64-bit (pointer wordsize) application binary interfaces (ABIs), this variable can be set to select which ABI to use. Valid values are 32 or 64. By default the most common ABI is chosen. On x86_64 architectures three additional, more specific ABI settings are available, x86_64_32, x86_64_small and x86_64_medium.
Not normally set by user. ESMF auto-generates subroutine interfaces for a wide variety of data arrays of different ranks, shapes, and types. Setting this variable to TRUE instructs ESMF to not generating interfaces for 5D, 6D, and 7D arrays. This shrinks the amount of autogenerated code as well as the number of overloaded interfaces.
This environment variable controls the build option. To make a debuggable version of the library set ESMF_BOPT to g before building. The default is O (capital oh) which builds an optimized version of the library. If ESMF_BOPT is O, ESMF_OPTLEVEL can also be set to a numeric value between 0 and 4 to select a specific optimization level.
On systems with a vendor-supplied MPI communications library, the vendor library is chosen by default for communications. On these systems ESMF_COMM is set to mpi, signaling to the ESMF build system to use the vendor MPI implementation. For other systems (e.g. Linux or Darwin) where a multitude of MPI implementations are available, ESMF_COMM must be set to indicate which implementation is used to build the ESMF library. Set ESMF_COMM according to your situation to: mpt, mpich, mpich1, mpich2, mpich3, mvapich2, lam, openmpi or intelmpi. ESMF_COMM may also be set to user indicating that the user will set all the required flags using advanced ESMF environment variables. Some individual MPI builds may create additional libraries that need to be linked in, such as the legacy C++ bindings. These may be specified via the ESMF_CXXLINKLIBS and ESMF_F90LINKLIBS environment variables.
Alternatively, ESMF comes with a single-processor MPI-bypass library which is the default for Linux and Darwin systems. To force the use of this bypass library set ESMF_COMM equal to mpiuni.
The ESMF library build requires a working Fortran90 and C++ compiler. On platforms that don't come with a single vendor supplied compiler suite (e.g. Linux or Darwin) ESMF_COMPILER must be set to select which Fortran and C++ compilers are being used to build the ESMF library. Notice that setting the ESMF_COMPILER variable does not affect how the compiler executables are located on the system. ESMF_COMPILER (together with ESMF_COMM) affect the name that is expected for the compiler executables. Furthermore, the ESMF_COMPILER setting is used to select compiler and linker flags consistent with the compilers indicated.
By default Fortran and C++ compiler executables are expected to be located in a location contained in the user's PATH environment variable. This means that if you cannot locate the correct compiler executable via the which command on the shell prompt the ESMF build system won't find it either!
There are advanced ESMF environment variables that can be used to select specific compiler executables by specifying the full path. This can be used to pick specific compiler executables without having to modify the PATH environment variable.
Use 'gmake info' to see which compiler executables the ESMF build system will be using according to your environment variable settings.
To see possible values for ESMF_COMPILER, cd to $ESMF_DIR/build_config and list the directories there. The first part of each directory name corresponds to the output of 'uname -s' for this platform. The second part contains possible values for ESMF_COMPILER. In some cases multiple combinations of Fortran and C++ compilers are possible, e.g. there is intel and intelgcc available for Linux. Setting ESMF_COMPILER to intel indicates that both Intel Fortran and C++ compilers are used, whereas intelgcc indicates that the Intel Fortran compiler is used in combination with GCC's C++ compiler.
If you do not find a configuration that matches your situation you will need to port ESMF.
This variable can be used to override the default C++ compiler and linker front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
Prepend compiler flags to the list of flags the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend compiler search paths to the list of search paths the ESMF build system determines.
This variable can be used to override the default C++ compiler front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
This variable can be used to override the default C++ linker front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
Prepend libraries to the list of libraries the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker flags to the list of flags the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker search paths to the list of search paths the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker rpaths to the list of rpaths the ESMF build system determines.
This variable can be used to override the default C++ optimization flag.
Used to set the C++ language standard. If unset or default, the ESMF default C++ language standard is used: C++11. If set to an integer, the integer is used to indicate the respective C++ language standard to the compiler. ESMF does not check whether the integer corresponds to an existing language standard. Setting sysdefault results in usage of the compiler specific default C++ language standard. This can lead to build issue if the compiler default is below the level required by ESMF.
This variable can be used to override the deferring of the build of the ESMF library. By default, the library is built after all of the source files have been compiled. This speeds up the build process. It also allows parallel compilation of source code when the -j flag is used with gmake. Setting this environment variable to OFF forces the library to be updated after each individual compilation, thus disabling the ability to use parallel compilation.
The environment variable ESMF_DIR must be set to the full pathname of the top level ESMF directory before building the framework. This is the only environment variable which is required to be set on all platforms under all conditions.
This variable can be used to override the default Fortran90 compiler and linker front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
Prepend compiler flags to the list of flags the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend compiler search paths to the list of search paths the ESMF build system determines.
This variable can be used to override the default Fortran90 compiler front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
This variable can be used to override the default flag (-I) used to specify a Fortran module directory.
This variable can be used to override the default Fortran90 linker front-end executables. The executable may be specified with absolute path overriding the location determined by default from the user's PATH variable.
Prepend libraries to the list of libraries the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker flags to the list of flags the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker search paths to the list of search paths the ESMF build system determines.
Prepend linker rpaths to the list of rpaths the ESMF build system determines.
This variable can be used to override the default Fortran90 optimization flag.
Location into which to install the ESMF apps during installation. This location can be specified as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX.
Location into which to install the documentation during installation. This location can be specified as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX.
Location into which to install the header files during installation. This location can be specified as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX.
Location into which to install the library files during installation. This location can be specified as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX.
Location into which to install the F90 module files during installation. This location can be specified as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX.
This variable specifies the prefix of the installation path used during the installation process accessible thought the install target. Libraries, F90 module files, header files and documentation all are installed relative to ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX by default. The ESMF_INSTALL_PREFIX may be provided as absolute path (starting with "/") or relative to ESMF_DIR.
Not normally set by user. This variable indicates architectural details about the machine on which the ESMF library is being built. The value of this variable will affect which ABI settings are available and what they mean. ESMF_MACHINE is set automatically.
Variable used to pass system-specific queue options to the batch system. Typically the queue, project and limits are set. See section 11.1.1 for a discussion of this option.
Variable used to pass system-specific options to the MPI launch facility. See section 11.1.1 for a discussion of this option.
This variable can be used to override the default utility used to launch parallel execution of ESMF test applications in MPMD mode. The executable in ESMF_MPIMPMDRUN may be specified with path.
This variable can be used to override the default utility used to launch parallel ESMF test or example applications. The executable in ESMF_MPIRUN may be specified with path. See section 11.1.1 for a discussion of this option.
Variable used to pass system-specific options to the first level MPI script accessed by ESMF. See section 11.1.1 for a discussion of this option.
Not normally set by user. Setting this variable to FALSE instructs ESMF to generating data array interfaces for data types of 1-byte integers.
Not normally set by user. Setting this variable to FALSE instructs ESMF to generating data array interfaces for data types of 2-byte integers.
Compiles and links the ESMF library with OpenACC compiler flags.
Compiles and links the ESMF library with OpenMP compiler flags.
See ESMF_BOPT for details.
Not normally set by user unless cross-compiling. This variable indicates the target system for which the ESMF library is being built. Under normal circumstances, i.e. ESMF is being build on the target system, ESMF_OS is set automatically. However, when cross-compiling for a different target system ESMF_OS must be set to the respective target OS. For example, when compiling for the Cray X1 on an interactive X1 node ESMF_OS will be set automatically. However, when ESMF is being cross-compiled for the X1 on a Linux host the user must set ESMF_OS to Unicos manually in order to indicate the intended target platform.
This compile-time option controls ESMF's dependency on a functioning Pthreads library. The default option is set to ON with the exception of IRIX64 and platforms that don't provide Pthreads. On IRIX64 the use of Pthreads in ESMF is disabled by default because the Pthreads library conflicts with the use of OpenMP on this platform.
The user can override the default setting of ESMF_PTHREADS on all platforms that provide Pthread support. Setting the ESMF_PTHREADS environment variable to OFF will disable ESMF's Pthreads feature set. On platforms that don't support Pthreads, e.g. IBM BlueGene/L or Cray XT3, the default OFF setting cannot be overridden!
Build configure file site name or the value default. If not set, then the value of default is assumed. When including platform-specific files, this value is used as the third part of the directory name (parts 1 and 2 are the ESMF_OS value and ESMF_COMPILER value, respectively.)
The Sourceforge esmfcontrib repository contains makefiles which have already been customized for certain machines. If one exists for your site and you wish to use it, download the corresponding files into the build_contrib directory and set ESMF_SITE to your location (which corresponds to the last part of the directory name). See the Sourceforge site http://sourceforge.net/projects/esmfcontrib for more information.
Variable specifying whether the ESMFMKFILE variable is evaluated to determine which ESMF installation is being tested against. If set to the value ON, all tests and examples are build against the ESMF installation referenced by the ESMFMKFILE variable. For OFF, the ESMFMKFILE variable is ignored and the tests and examples are build against the ESMF under ESMF_DIR. This is the default.
Variable specifying how to compile the unit tests. If set to the value ON, then all unit tests will be compiled and will be executed when the test is run. If unset or set to any other value, only a subset of the unit tests will be included to verify basic functions. Note that this is a compile-time selection, not a run-time option.
The ON setting enforces usage of OpenACC compiler flags when building ESMF test applications. This allows testing of user-level OpenACC usage even with ESMF_OPENACC set to OFF.
The ON setting enforces usage of OpenMP compiler flags when building ESMF test applications. This allows testing of user-level OpenMP usage even with ESMF_OPENMP set to OFF.
Variable specifying the test harness makefile target for the array class. If this variable is not specified, a default test scenario will be run for the array class. See the ESMF Software Developer's Guide for instructions for selecting other test harness scenarios.
Variable specifying the test harness makefile target for the field class. If this variable is not specified, a default test scenario will be run for the field class. See the ESMF Software Developer's Guide for instructions for selecting other test harness scenarios.
Variable specifying whether to run MPMD-style tests, i.e. test applications that start up as multiple separate executables.
Variable specifying whether to run shared object tests. This requires that the compute environment supports shared objects, and that the ESMF library is available in form of a shared library.
If this environment variable is set to ON before the ESMF system tests are build they will activate ESMF threading in their code. Specifically each component will be executed using ESMF single threading instead of the default non-threaded mode. The difference between non-threaded and ESMF single threaded execution should be completely transparent. Notice that the setting of ESMF_TESTWITHTHREADS does not alter ESMF's dependency on Pthreads but tests ESMF threading features during the system tests. An ESMF library that was compiled with disabled Pthread features (via the ESMF_PTHREADS variable) will produce ESMF error messages during system test execution if the system tests were compiled with ESMF_TESTWITHTHREADS set to ON.
This variables determines whether extra libraries are built that are used to add additional symbols to the ESMF tracing and profiling capability, such as MPI communication functions. If set to ON the libraries are built and placed into the ESMF_INSTALL_LIBDIR alongside the ESMF library itself.
Environment variables must be set in the user's shell or when calling gmake. It is not necessary to edit ESMF makefiles or other build system files to set these variables. Here is an example of setting an environment variable in the csh/tcsh shell:
setenv ESMF_ABI 32
In bash/ksh shell environment variables are set this way:
export ESMF_ABI=32
Environment variables can also be set from the gmake command line:
gmake ESMF_ABI=32
The platforms that are tested and supported depend on the release of ESMF. To see the specific list of supported platforms, click the Supported Platforms link under one of the releases on the ESMF releases page.
Building the library for multiple architectures or options at the same time is supported; building or running the tests or examples is restricted to one platform/architecture at a time. The output from the test cases will be stored in a separate directories so the results will be kept separate for different architectures or options.
GNU make is required to build the library. On some systems this will be just the command make. On others it might be installed as gmake or even gnumake. In any event, use the -version option with the make command to determine if it is GNU make.
Build the library with the command:
gmake
Makefiles throughout the framework are configured to allow users to compile files only in the directory where gmake is entered. Shared libraries are rebuilt only if necessary. In addition the entire ESMF framework may be built from any directory by entering gmake all, assuming that all the environmental variables are set correctly as described in Section 9.5.
The makefiles are also configured to allow multiple make targets to be compiled in parallel, via the gmake -j flag. For example, to use eight parallel processes to build the library, use -j8:
gmake -j8 lib
The parallel compilation feature depends on ESMF_DEFER_LIB_BUILD=ON (the default) so that the library build will be deferred until all files have been compiled.
The -j option should only be used during the creation of the library. The test base and examples will not work correctly with -j set larger than 1.
Users may also run examples or execute unit tests of specific classes by changing directories to the desired class examples or tests directories and entering gmake run_examples or gmake run_unit_tests, respectively. For non-multiprocessor machines, uni-processor targets are available as gmake run_examples_uni or gmake run_unit_tests_uni.
The ESMF source documentation consists of an ESMF User's Guide and an ESMF Reference Manual for Fortran.
The tarballs on the ESMF website for ESMF versions 3.0.1 and later do not contain the ESMF documentation files. The documentation is available on the ESMF website in html or pdf form and most users should not need to build it from the source.
If a user does want to build the documentation, they will need to download the ESMF code repository (see section 5.1.1). Latex, latex2html, perl and csh must also be installed. For example, dependencies may be installed on Ubuntu Linux using:
[sudo] apt-get install texlive latex2html perl csh
To build documentation:
gmake doc ! Builds the manuals, including pdf and html.
The resulting documentation files will be located in the top level directory $ESMF_DIR/doc
The ESMF build system offers the standard install target to install all necessary files created during the build process into user specified locations. The installation procedure will also install the ESMF documentation if it has been built successfully following the procedure outlined above.
The installation location can be customized using six ESMF_ environment variables:
Section 9.5 describes what each of these environment variables does and how to set them.
Install ESMF with the command:
gmake install
Check the ESMF installation with the command:
gmake installcheck
Advice to installers. To complete the installation of ESMF, a single ESMF specific environment variable should be set. The variable is named ESMFMKFILE, and it must point to the esmf.mk file that was generated during the installation process. Systems that support multiple ESMF installations via management software (e.g. modules, softenv, ...) should set/reset the ESMFMKFILE environment variable as part of the configuration.
Additionally, it is typically convenient to append the user's PATH environment variable to provide access to the ESMF applications that were built during the installation process. The application binaries are located in the directory that was specified as ESMF_INSTALL_BINDIR during the ESMF installation. The location is also stored in variable ESMF_APPSDIR, defined in file esmf.mk. Systems that make ESMF installations available through management software (e.g. modules, softenv, ...) should modify the user's PATH environment variable as part of the configuration.
Hint. By default, file esmf.mk is located next to the ESMF library file in directory ESMF_INSTALL_LIBDIR. Consequently, unless esmf.mk has been moved to a different location after the installation, the correct setting for ESMFMKFILE is $(ESMF_INSTALL_LIBDIR)/esmf.mk.
Rationale. The only piece of information that is needed to use an ESMF installation is the exact location of the associated esmf.mk file. This file contains all of the relevant settings and flags that allow a user to build their application against the ESMF installation. Standardizing the mechanism by which the location of esmf.mk is made available to the user by the system will help users in the design of portable application build systems. (See sections 6 and 8 for details about the usage of esmf.mk.) Further, modifying the user's PATH environment variable is optional, since the location of the ESMF application binaries is available through the esmf.mk file. However, setting the user's PATH variable so that the ESMF applications are directly and conveniently accessible from the command line is recommended, especially if management software (e.g. modules, softenv, ...) is used on the system.
esmf_support@ucar.edu