[Users] Editing .cfg file for a machine to use locally installed external libraries (Simfactory, optionlist)

[Dumsani Ndzinisa]

Hi everyone,

I have been able to successfully build an Einstein toolkit simulation
using the latest release of the toolkit (ET_2014_05). I am particularly
following the 2013 notes by Miguel Zilhao and Frank Loeffler, "An
Introduction to the Einstein Toolkit" (arXiv:1305:5299v2 [gr-qc] ).

In my build I have used the bundled Cactus libraries for almost all
required external libraries. I appreciate this as an entry level step
for a beginner like myself. But, as advised in the notes as well,
making use of locally installed copies of these libraries may speed
up the overall building process somehow - something which I will
definitely need moving forward. However, my attempt at this just
proved to be completely incorrect. The linker vehemently complained
about not being able to find blas, lapack, mpi, etc.. I thought this
could only mean one thing - that I did not enter the directory paths (for
the libraries and the header files to be "included") and library names
correctly.

For instance, in my .cfg file, this is what I had entered for the BLAS
library
   BLAS_DIR = NO_BUILD
   BLAS_LIB_DIRS =  /usr/lib/libblas
   BLAS_INC_DIRS =  /usr/include
   BLAS_LIBS     =  libblas3 libblas-dev

It turned out that the linker could not proceed well with this.

I can attach my entire cfg file for anyone who might wish to view it
in order to see where I'm going wrong and provide suggestions.
Under the fields such as BLAS_LIB_DIRS and BLAS_INC_DIRS, I have
been using results returned by the commalnd
" locate <package/library name>". Of course, this command returns
a plethora of directory/file locations where there are occurrences of
<package/library name>. I would then choose those starting with /usr/...

Then for fields like BLAS_LIBS, I used output returned by the command
"dpkg --get-selections | grep <package/library name> ". However,
sometimes this command returns quite a number of things and I
would get a bit confused about what to "choose" and leave out as
the the name of the library(-ies). This, for example, has been the
case with my MPI since I have installed both OPENMPI and MPICH.

How exactly should this information be entered in the .cfg file such
that the build uses the locally installed external libraries?

Thank you in advance for your help.