ICODE-ADC/lammps
4
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

add page about portability

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
Axel Kohlmeyer
2023-01-20 23:40:41 -05:00
parent 03b532db4a
commit 3f34f54847
3 changed files with 77 additions and 0 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

1
doc/src/Intro.rst
View File

@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ These pages provide a brief introduction to LAMMPS.
Manual_version
Intro_features
Intro_nonfeatures
Intro_portability
Intro_opensource
Intro_authors
Intro_citing

75
doc/src/Intro_portability.rst Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
Portability and compatibility of LAMMPS
---------------------------------------
The primary form of distributing LAMMPS is through highly portable
source code. But also several ways of obtaining LAMMPS as `precompiled
packages or through automated build mechanisms <Install>` exist. Most
of LAMMPS is written in C++, some support tools are written in Fortran
or Python or MATLAB.
Programming language standards
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Most of the C++ code currently requires a compiler compatible with the
C++11 standard, the KOKKOS package currently requires C++14. Most of
the Python code is written to be compatible with Python 3.5 or later or
Python 2.7. Some Python scripts *require* Python 3 and a few others
still need to be ported from Python 2 to Python 3.
Build systems
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
LAMMPS can be compiled from source code using a (traditional) build
system based on shell scripts, a few shell utilities (grep, sed, cat,
tr) and the GNU make program. This requires running within a Bourne
shell (``/bin/sh``). Alternatively, a build system with different back ends
can be created using CMake. CMake must be at least version 3.10.
Operating systems
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The primary development platform for LAMMPS is Linux. Thus the chances
for LAMMPS to compile without problems on Linux machines are the best.
Also compilation and correct execution on macOS and Windows (using
Microsoft Visual C++) is checked automatically for largest part of the
source code. Some (optional) features are not compatible with all
operating systems either through limitations of the source code or
source code compatibility or the build system requirements of required
libraries.
Executables for Windows may be created using either Cygwin or Visual
Studio or a Linux to Windows MinGW cross-compiler.
Additionally, FreeBSD and Solaris have been tested successfully.
Compilers
^^^^^^^^^
The most commonly used compilers are the GNU compilers, but also Clang
and the Intel compilers have been successfully used on Linux, macOS, and
Windows. Also the Nvidia HPC SDK (formerly PGI compilers) will compile
LAMMPS (tested on Linux).
CPU architectures
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The primary CPU architecture for running LAMMPS is 64-bit x86, but also
32-bit x86, and 64-bit ARM and PowerPC (64-bit, Little Endian) are
regularly tested.
Portability compliance
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not all of the LAMMPS source code is fully compliant to all of the above
mentioned standards. This is rather typical for projects like LAMMPS
that largely depend on contributions of features from the community.
Not all contributors are trained as programmers and not all of them have
access to a variety of platforms. As part of the continuous integration
process, however, all contributions are automatically tested to compile,
link, and pass some runtime tests on a selection of Linux flavors,
macOS, and Windows with different compilers. Other platforms may be
checked occasionally or when portability bug are reported.