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FEMCourseEigen ON WINDOWS

Author: Pedro Lima

Date: March 2021

Notes

  • Note 0: This tutorial assumes you have forked this repository from https://github.com/labmec/FEMCourseEigen. If you haven't forked it, or don't know what a fork is, you should ask your professor or check course syllabus, then come back here.

  • Note 1: C++ development with CMake on Windows is tricky. If this is your introduction to programming with C++ and you never heard of CMake, you should probably go for Ubuntu or MacOS. Your course instructor probably recommended you to go for Ubuntu, and you should listen to him. Finite Element approximations will prove challanging enough on their own. Figuring these stuff out on your own will not be trivial. Proceed at your own risk.

  • Note 2: I’m writing this after I got it working with Visual Studio Community 2019 as my compiler, and VSCode as IDE. I did not try anything else, but made an effort not to assume any code editor from the reader. As a result, this tutorial feels general enough that others can adapt it to their needs. If you’d like the adventure yourself, here are some other popular options:

    • Visual Studio Community as compiler & editor;
    • CLion;
    • MinGW+VSCode;
    • Cygwin+VSCode;

If you manage, though, please write up a similar tutorial and submit it so others can benefit from your accomplishments.

  • Note 3: Don't be alarmed by error messages when installing Eigen and Boost. As long as the build ends successfully with error code 0, you're fine.
  • Note 4: Things that are different for each reader were written with the placeholder ${thing} and you should, obviously, replace it for whatever you have on your side. ${thing} = thing-in-my-pc e.g. my name is Nina Simone so, in my computer, I'm logged in as a user named nina
    ${your-username} = nina
    NOT ${nina} JUST nina
  • Note 5: I left some micro-steps and little details unwritten. I judged the instructions of the package providers (Eigen, CMake, git, …) were clear enough for the reader to figure out what option should suit their own machine.

Steps

  1. Download and install Visual Studio https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

    • Open the downloaded Visual Studio Installer and configure your Visual Studio installation to your preferences;
    • “C++ for desktop development” should have more than enough packages for this course;
    • Note: If you know what you’re doing, you can tweak the configuration a bit to get Visual Studio to install CMake & git for you. If so, you could possibly skip steps 2 and 3. (I’ve added them anyway, just in case.)

  2. Download and install CMake (Binary distribution)

    • https://cmake.org/download/
    • Windows x64 Installer is probably what you want, but you have to chose the one for your machine;
    • During installation, make sure you select “add CMake to path”, for convenience.

  3. Download and install git

  4. Create the following directories on your disk:

    (If you know what you're doing, you don't have to follow this step perfectly, but I'll assume you did)

    REPLACE ${your-username} for your username on your computer.

    C:\Users\${your-username}\projects

    C:\Users\${your-username}\projects\lib

  5. Download Eigen (optional)

    If Eigen is not found by CMake, it will then be downloaded automatically. In case you would rather install it anyway, you can follow these instructions:

    Note: Eigen is a header-only library, so you could just copy the /Eigen folder from within the zip you downloaded and paste it into your /headers2021 directory, but the course CMakeLists.txt assumes you've properly installed it, so:

    • Unpack it inside the directory projects/lib that you created few steps ago
    • Open your preferred terminal (cmd or WindowsPowerShell) and don't forget to change the placeholder ${your-username}
    cd C:\Users\${your-username}\projects\lib
mkdir eigen-build
mkdir Eigen3
cd eigen-3.3.9
cmake -S . -B ..\eigen-build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=C:/Users/${your-username}/projects/lib/Eigen3
cd ..\eigen-build
cmake --build . --target install

  6. Install Catch2 (optional)

https://github.com/catchorg/Catch2 is used for the Unit Tests. It is also automatically downloaded by CMake if not found.

  1. Clone course repository.

    Assuming you have already forked the repository, open your preferred terminal and run:

    cd projects
git clone https://github.com/${your-github-username}/FEMCourseEigen

  2. Configure

    • Open the CMake GUI;

    • Select your project root directory in Where is the source code:

      If you've been following, it'll be at C:\Users\${your-username}\projects\FEMCourseEigen

    • Select your preferred build directory in Where to build the binaries:

      If this is your first time, you might want to use C:\Users\${your-username}\projects\FEMCourseEigen\build

    • Press configure.

      (If you're doing this for the first time, CMake will ask you what type of MakeFiles you want it to generate. This is compiler dependent, and this tutorial expects you to choose VisualStudio 2019)

    • Resolve any path CMake couldn't automatically find (there shouldn't be any if you followed this tutorial correctly);

    • Keep pressing configure until there are no more error messages;

    • Press generate

  3. Build

    • Go to your preferred IDE, or command line and build.
    IF YOU ARE USING VSCode click the triangle to the left to unfold more instructions - Download the following extensions: 
     1. C/C++ [by Microsoft]
 2. CMake [by twxs]
 3. CMake Tools [by Microsoft]
 4. C/C++ Themes [by Microsoft]
 5. Better C++ Syntax [by Jeff Hykin]

    • Press ctrl+shift+P

    • In the prompted box at the top, type

      CMake: Delete Cache and Reconfigure

      the search should autocomplete before you can finish

    • Execute the command.

    • If you're prompted for a kit, you probably want

      Visual Studio Community 2019 Release - x86_amd64

      if that doesn't work, you can try the other kits. There's a button at the bar at the bottom. You can also leave [non specified] and have CMake try to guess it (that didn't work for me).

    • Press ctrl+shift+P again

    • now type CMake: Clean Rebuild and run the command to build all targets.

  4. Paraview https://www.paraview.org/download/

  • Pick windows and version 5.9 (which is the latest release as I'm writing this).
  • Download the installer
    ParaView-5.9.0-Windows-Python3.8-msvc2017-64bit.exe