Special Compiling Cases

This guide explains some of the less common ways to build Cantera

Building the Conda Package

  • The recipe for the Cantera Conda package is located at https://github.com/Cantera/conda-recipes

  • To build the Conda package, an installation of conda is required, with the package conda-build installed.

  • Clone the package repository and build the recipe:

    git clone https://github.com/Cantera/conda-recipes
    cd conda-recipes
    conda build cantera
    
  • This will build Cantera using the same version major version of Python as in the base environment. To build for a different version of Python, use the --python=X.Y flag to the build command. To build for a different version of NumPy, use the --numpy=X.Y flag to the build command.

Intel Compilers

  • The following instructions refer to the Intel OneAPI Toolkit.

  • Before compiling Cantera, you may need to set up the appropriate environment variables for the Intel compiler suite. For example:

    source /opt/intel/oneapi/setvars.sh
    
  • For the Intel compiler to work with SCons, these environment variables need to be passed through SCons by using the command line option:

    env_vars=all
    
  • If you want to use the Intel MKL versions of BLAS and LAPACK, you will need to provide additional options. The following are typically correct on 64-bit Linux systems:

    blas_lapack_libs=mkl_rt blas_lapack_dir=$(MKLROOT)/lib/intel64
    

    Your final SCons call might then look something like:

    scons build env_vars=all CC=icx CXX=icpx FORTRAN=ifx blas_lapack_libs=mkl_rt blas_lapack_dir=$(MKLROOT)/lib/intel64
    
  • When installing Cantera after building with the Intel compiler, the normal method of using sudo to install Cantera to the system default directories will not work because sudo does not pass the environment variables needed by the Intel compiler. Instead, you will need to do something like:

    scons build ...
    sudo -s
    source /path/to/setvars.sh
    scons install
    exit
    

    Another option is to set the prefix option to a directory for which you have write permissions, and specify the USER value to the python_prefix option.