Customize installation

#1

hello all,
just a few simple questions for when installing BioDynaMo:

Q1: Is it possible to customise the C/C++ compilers used for the compilation and library built up? Is it possible to provide that explicitly in the terminal (on the command line) when executing the “./install.sh” script?

Q2: Is it possible to customise the installation path (instead of using default path: the home directory)? Is it possible to provide that explicitly in the terminal (on the command line) when executing the “./install.sh” script?

Q3: Currently, I’ve successfully installed biodynamo-v0.9.52 [commit 3ffadd00671ef4e01f77d122e66654be8395e6fe on master branch]. However, any tips where to look at the installation regarding the setups (i.e., which compilers used, compilation flags, linker flags, macro definitions, etc.). I will need to use them on to my C++ project (that uses BioDynaMo classes) and therefore effectively link it with BioDynaMo itself?

For the record, I’m operating on macOS Catalina. Many thanks in advance!

#2

Hi @VasVav,

To answer your questions:

A1: yes it is possible to change the compiler when using the install.sh script. You can define the BDM_CMAKE_FLAGS environmental variable to include the CMake options that you would normally use in a CMake invocation. For example:

BDM_CMAKE_FLAGS="-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++" ./install.sh`

A2: Similarly to the above method you could specify the installation directory with

BDM_CMAKE_FLAGS="-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/my/custom/path" ./install.sh

As you correctly mentioned, this is by default set to $HOME

A3: You can find a lot of that info back using the binary bdm-config. Have a look with bdm-config --help to see what it can do :slight_smile:

Hope this helps.

#3

hi @ahesam, many thanks for the response and apologies for the late reply.
I do confirm your suggestions do work like a charm :slight_smile: many thanks