Building MFEM

A simple tutorial how to build and run the serial and parallel version of MFEM together with GLVis. For more details, see the INSTALL file and make help.

In addition to the native build system described below, MFEM packages are also available in the following package managers:

• Spack
• OpenHPC
• Homebrew/Science (deprecated)

Instructions

Download MFEM and GLVis

• http://mfem.org
• http://glvis.org

Below we assume that we are working with versions 3.0.

Serial version of MFEM and GLVis

Put everything in the same directory:

~> ls
glvis-3.0.tgz   mfem-3.0.tgz

Build the serial version of MFEM:

~> tar -zxvf mfem-3.0.tgz
~> cd mfem-3.0
~/mfem-3.0> make serial -j

Build GLVis:

~> tar -zxvf glvis-3.0.tgz
~> cd glvis-3.0
~/glvis-3.0> make MFEM_DIR=../mfem-3.0 -j

That's it! The MFEM library can be found in mfem-3.0/libmfem.a, while the glvis executable will be in the glvis-3.0 directory.

To start a GLVis server, open a new terminal and type

~> cd glvis-3.0
~/glvis-3.0> ./glvis

The serial examples can be build with:

~> cd mfem-3.0/examples
~/mfem-3.0/examples> make -j

All serial examples and miniapps can be build with:

~> cd mfem-3.0
~/mfem-3.0> make all -j

Parallel MPI version of MFEM

Download hypre and metis from

• https://computation.llnl.gov/casc/hypre/software.html
• http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/metis/metis/download

Below we assume that we are working with versions 2.16.0 and 4.0.3 respectively. We also assume that the serial version of MFEM and GLVis have been built as described above.

Put everything in the same directory:

~> ls
glvis-3.0/  hypre-2.16.0.tar.gz   metis-4.0.tar.gz   mfem-3.0/

Build hypre:

~> tar -zxvf hypre-2.16.0.tar.gz
~> cd hypre-2.16.0/src/
~/hypre-2.16.0/src> ./configure --disable-fortran
~/hypre-2.16.0/src> make -j
~/hypre-2.16.0/src> cd ../..
~> ln -s hypre-2.16.0 hypre

Build metis:

~> tar -zxvf metis-4.0.3.tar.gz
~> cd metis-4.0.3
~/metis-4.0.3> make
~/metis-4.0.3> cd ..
~> ln -s metis-4.0.3 metis-4.0

(If you are using METIS 5, see the instructions below.)

Build the parallel version of MFEM:

~> cd mfem-3.0
~/mfem-3.0> make parallel -j

Note that if hypre or metis are in different locations, or you have different versions of these libraries, you will need to update the corresponding paths in the config/defaults.mk file, or create you own config/user.mk, as described in the INSTALL file.

The parallel examples can be build with:

~> cd mfem-3.0/examples
~/mfem-3.0/examples> make -j

The serial examples can also be build with the parallel version of the library, e.g.

~/mfem-3.0/examples> make ex1 ex2

All parallel examples and miniapps can be build with:

~> cd mfem-3.0
~/mfem-3.0> make all -j

One can also use the parallel library to optionally (re-)build GLVis:

~> cd glvis-3.0
~/glvis-3.0> make clean
~/glvis-3.0> make MFEM_DIR=../mfem-3.0 -j

This, however, is generally not recommended, since the additional MPI thread interferes with the other GLVis threads.

Parallel build using METIS 5

Build METIS 5:

~> tar zvxf metis-5.1.0.tar.gz
~> cd metis-5.1.0
~/metis-5.1.0> make config ; make
~/metis-5.1.0> ln -s build/Linux-x86_64/libmetis/libmetis.a .

Build the parallel version of MFEM, setting the options MFEM_USE_METIS_5 and METIS_DIR, e.g.:

~> cd mfem-3.0
~/mfem-3.0> make parallel -j MFEM_USE_METIS_5=YES METIS_DIR=@MFEM_DIR@/../metis-5.1.0