Configure with CMake

Dakota uses CMake to manage building and testing the complex set of codes and libraries that make up Dakota, including setting options and locations of external tools and libraries. The CMake Documentation offers reference documentation and tutorials.

CMake uses two separate directories. In these instructions, the source directory is referred to as DAK_SRC; the build directory, DAK_BUILD. The source directory contains the Dakota source code and the cmake files. The user creates the build directory and builds from that directory. It is initially empty; it will be populated with the Dakota executable, libraries, packages and examples.

Note

Dakota only supports out-of-source builds, not building in-place in the source tree. (The build directory can be outside the source tree, e.g., peer to it, or in a sub-folder of the source tree, e.g., DAK_SRC/build).

Dakota and CMake itself support numerous configuration settings. There are several ways to specify options to CMake, including at the command line, with a CMake cache initialization script, and through one of the CMake GUIs.

Attention

CMake persists configuration information (including detected system properties and software) in a file $DAK_BUILD/CMakeCache.txt and associated files/directories. When revising your Dakota CMake settings, it is helpful to remove these files or delete the entire build directory contents. This avoids inadvertently using previous settings.

Attention

When using the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX CMake setting, configuration information can be stored there as well, and it is good practice to remove the installation directory contents when revising CMake settings.

Configuring at the Command Line

Simple Command Line Example:

mkdir build
cd build

# Configure the build tree.
cmake \
  -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/myFavoriteUser/dakota \
  -D DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI:BOOL=TRUE \
  -D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH=/usr/bin/mpicxx \
  -D MPI_LIBRARY:FILEPATH=/usr/lib/libmpi_cxx.so \
  $DAK_SRC

In this example the following CMake cache variables are defined:

  • CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: where to install the Dakota executables, libraries and examples

  • DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI:BOOL=TRUE: build with MPI to allow for parallel processing

  • CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH: location of MPI compiler

  • MPI_LIBRARY:FILEPATH: location of MPI library

Configuring with a CMake Script

Dakota build settings can be written in a CMake script file (referred to as build file here). The directory $DAK_SRC/cmake/examples contains a collection of build files. There are historical platform-specific examples such as BuildRHEL7.cmake, BuildDarwin.cmake, and Build_win_msvc_ifort.cmake. The build file BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake is a template that contains the most commonly used Dakota CMake variables.

Some common settings in a build file include:

  • specify the folder where the Dakota binaries will be installed

  • build without MPI

  • build with MPI and tell cmake where to find the relevant MPI files

  • turn on or off Dakota features

Simple Build File Example

See Using BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake for a description of the variables and instructions for use. Once you have customized this script for your platform, run the CMake script as follows:

mkdir build
cd build
cp ../cmake/BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake BuildDakota.cmake

# Configure the build tree
cmake -C BuildDakota.cmake $DAK_SRC

You can iteratively make changes to BuildDakota.cmake for your platform (see link above). Once your script correctly builds Dakota, save it in a more permanent location for later reuse.

Using BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake

The CMake variables in file $DAK_SRC/cmake/examples/BuildDakotaTemplate.cmake represent the minimum set of variables necessary to:

  • find all prerequisite third party libraries (TPLs)

  • configure compiler and MPI options

  • set Dakota install path

Typically you would uncomment CMake variables only for values you need to change for your platform. Once you edit variables as needed, run CMake with the script file.

Linear Algebra: Set BLAS, LAPACK library paths if in non-standard locations.

set( BLAS_LIBS "/usr/lib64"
  CACHE FILEPATH "Use non-standard BLAS library path" FORCE )
set( LAPACK_LIBS "/usr/lib64"
  CACHE FILEPATH "Use non-standard BLAS library path" FORCE )

Compiler Options: Uncomment and replace <flag> with actual compiler flag, e.g. -xxe4.2.

set( CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} <flag>"
  CACHE STRING "C Flags my platform" )
set( CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} <flag>"
  CACHE STRING "CXX Flags for my platform" )
set( CMAKE_Fortran_FLAGS "${CMAKE_Fortran_FLAGS} <flag>"
  CACHE STRING "Fortran Flags for my platform" )

MPI options: Recommended practice is to set DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI and set MPI_CXX_COMPILER to a compiler wrapper.

set( DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI ON
   CACHE BOOL "Build with MPI enabled" FORCE)
set( MPI_CXX_COMPILER "path/to/mpicxx"
   CACHE FILEPATH "Use MPI compiler wrapper" FORCE)

Boost: You will need to set the following variables iff CMake cannot find your installed version of Boost or if you have a custom Boost install location.

set(BOOST_ROOT
  "path/to/custom/Boost/install/directory"
  CACHE PATH "Use non-standard Boost install" FORCE)
set( Boost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS TRUE
   CACHE BOOL "Supress search paths other than BOOST_ROOT" FORCE)

Trilinos: You will need to set the following variable if you have a custom Trilinos install location. If not set, the Dakota-shipped Trilinos will be built instead.

set( Trilinos_DIR
  "path/to/Trilinos/install"
  CACHE PATH "Path to installed Trilinos" FORCE )

Customize DAKOTA:

set( CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
  "/path/to/Dakota/installation"
  CACHE PATH "Path to Dakota installation" )

Top-level Build/Debug Options

Compilers: To prevent CMake from identifying mixed toolchains during system introspection, it is good practice to explicitly set CMAKE_C_COMPILER, CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER, and CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER.

Optimization and Debugging Symbols: The simplest way to set the optimization level and debug symbol inclusion for your builds is with CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE. For example set one of the following:

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug              # defaults to -g
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release            # defaults to -O3 -DNDEBUG
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo     # defaults to -O2 -g

You may also manually set the relevant flags at configure time and these will supplement any set by the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE configurations shown immediately above. For example:

CMAKE_C_FLAGS=-O2
CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-O2
CMAKE_Fortran_FLAGS=-O2

Shared vs. Static libraries: By default, Dakota builds and links external shared libraries but can also build static libraries if you need to link against static libraries without position-independent code, e.g,. an installed libblas.a or libmpi.a.

# Build static libraries ONLY
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=FALSE

Developer Convenience Macros: These shortcuts are designed to help routine development:

  • -C cmake/DakotaDev.cmake: enable MPI, docs, and specification maintenance.

  • -D DevDebugStatic:BOOL=ON turns on most common developer options, with debug build type, static libs, and bounds checking. For a shared debug build, instead set DevDebugShared.

  • -D DevDistro:BOOL=ON turns on most common developer options and distribution build type, shared libs, no bounds checking (equivalent to -C cmake/DakotaDistro.cmake -C cmake/DakotaDev.cmake).

Note

When combining these with additional options or configuration files, take care with their ordering to get the desired behavior.

Verbose Make: To see detailed compile/link commands generated by CMake: make VERBOSE=1 (on Unix platforms), or set CMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE:BOOL=TRUE when configuring.

External Libraries

This section discusses the most common Dakota options for finding external libraries.

Message Passing Interface (MPI)

Dakota uses the standard CMake FindMPI to find and configure MPI. The minimum for compiling Dakota with MPI is to make sure appropriate MPI binaries and libraries are on necessary PATHs and by setting DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI:BOOL=TRUE.

The recommended practice is to also specify a C++ compiler wrapper (and all specific compilers as discussed above to avoid mixed toolchains):

DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI:BOOL=TRUE
MPI_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH="/path/to/mpicxx"

By default, the MPI compiler wrapper will be used by CMake to find MPI, but not actually used for compilation. Rather the detected defines, includes, and libraries will be added to relevant MPI-enabled targets in the build.

If a compiler wrapper isn’t available, or specific MPI includes and libraries are needed, specify appropriate values for MPI_CXX_LIBRARIES and MPI_CXX_INCLUDE_PATH. This will circumvent any autodetection. If you want to force Dakota to use the MPI wrappers and not apply the detected libraries and headers, set

DAKOTA_HAVE_MPI:BOOL=TRUE
CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH="/path/to/mpicxx"
MPI_CXX_COMPILER:FILEPATH="/path/to/mpicxx"
DAKOTA_MPI_WRAPPER_ONLY:BOOL=TRUE

Boost C++ Libraries

Dakota uses the standard CMake FindBoost; see its documentation for the most up to date options. To identify a non-system default Boost installation, set BOOST_ROOT:PATH=/path/to/boost/1.69, where the specified path contains the include/ and lib/ directories. Alternately, for split installations, set BOOST_INCLUDEDIR and BOOST_LIBRARYDIR.

If you are using a non-system installed Boost, or your system has multiple Boost installations, it is often critical to set the following to avoid configuring Daktoa with a mix of headers from one Boost distribution and libraries from another:

# Avoid using BoostConfig.cmake if found on system
Boost_NO_BOOST_CMAKE:BOOL=TRUE

# Avoid using Boost from system location if found
Boost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS:BOOL=TRUE

Linear Algebra

Variables BLAS_LIBS=path/to/libblas.* and LAPACK_LIBS=path/to/liblapack.* can be used to identify Fortran linear algebra libraries. On some platforms these can be conveniently set to $ENV{BLAS_LIBS} and $ENV{LAPACK_LIBS} in a CMake cache initialization file.

Note: Not all Dakota’s TPLs treat BLAS and LAPACK with the same cache variables. To use specific versions of these libraries, the following is likely necessary to handle HOPSPACK LAPACK dependency on BLAS: LAPACK_ADD_LIBS=${BLAS_LIBS}.

HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format)

Dakota HDF5 results output requires the HDF5 C++ libraries. Building Dakota with HDF5 support requires HDF5 version 1.10.4 or higher. Parallel HDF5 is not needed at this time, but will be in future Dakota releases. In addition, the Python h5py module is needed to run some of the HDF5-related tests and for the HDF5 examples.

To enable HDF5:

DAKOTA_HAVE_HDF5:BOOL=ON

In addition, the variable HDF5_ROOT should typically be set to the top-level HDF5 directory (i.e. that contains the include and lib folders), cf CMake’s FindHDF5

External Trilinos

To compile Dakota against an externally installed Trilinos, set Trilinos_DIR to the directory in an install tree containing TrilinosConfig.cmake, e.g., /usr/local/trilinos/lib/cmake/Trilinos/, which contains TrilinosConfig.cmake (similarly Teuchos_DIR for location of TeuchosConfig.cmake).

Set the variable DAKOTA_NO_FIND_TRILINOS:BOOL=TRUE to disallow Dakota from attempting to find the Trilinos package. This can be useful when building Dakota as part of a large CMake project that includes Trilinos.

Dakota Features

See $DAK_SRC/cmake/DakotaOptions.cmake for the most up-to-date common options.

Documentation

Building Dakota documentation requires appropriate versions of Java, Perl, Doxygen and Sphinx and only works on Unix platforms: set ENABLE_DAKOTA_DOCS:BOOL=TRUE

Testing

The following options affect tests:

Table 24 Dakota Testing Options

CMake Option

Default

Notes

DAKOTA_ENABLE_TESTS

ON

Whether to enable Dakota system-level tests

DAKOTA_EXPAND_SUBTESTS

OFF

Whether to register one CTest test per system-level subtest

DAKOTA_ENABLE_TPL_TESTS

OFF

Whether to enable the following TPL tests

DDACE_ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

HOPSPACK_ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

LHS_ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

OPTPP_ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

PECOS_ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

ENABLE_TESTS

OFF

Whether to enable tests in Acro and Utilib

Specification maintenance

Dakota specification (input syntax) maintenance mode is used by developers when modifying Dakota XML input specification. It generates nidrgen and Dt binaries in packages/nidr and when dakota.input.nspec changes, will use them to update relevant generated files in $DAK_SRC/src since currently they need to be checked in. To enable specification maintenance, use the option ENABLE_SPEC_MAINT:BOOL=TRUE

QUESO for Bayesian Calibration

Compiling Dakota’s QUESO sub-package requires:

  • A Unix-like platform (not supported on Windows)

  • GSL 1.15 or newer, which means that resulting Dakota binaries will include GPL licensed components

Environment: If the program gsl-config is not on your PATH, you’ll either need to put it there, or set the environment variable export GSL_CONFIG=/usr/local/gsl/1.15/bin/gsl-config or similar. You may also need to export BOOST_ROOT=/usr/local/boost/1.69.0 or similar to make sure that QUESO and Dakota are built with the same Boost.

The following CMake settings are necessary to enable QUESO:

HAVE_QUESO:BOOL=ON
DAKOTA_HAVE_GSL:BOOL=ON

# Optionally, to disable GPMSA:
HAVE_QUESO_GPMSA:BOOL=OFF

# Optionally, specify a CBLAS to avoid numerical differences induced by using GSL's CBLAS, e.g., on RHEL6:
DAKOTA_CBLAS_LIBS:FILEPATH=/usr/lib64/atlas/libcblas.so.3

Dakota Components

Table 25 Dakota Core Component Options

CMake Option

Default

Notes

DAKOTA_MODULE_UTIL

ON

Dakota utility module (can be built on its own)

DAKOTA_MODULE_SURROGATES

ON

Dakota surrogates module (can be built on its own)

DAKOTA_MODULE_DAKOTA

ON

Balance of Dakota core capability

DAKOTA_EXAMPLES_INSTALL

share/dakota

Install destination for examples/, relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX

DAKOTA_TEST_INSTALL

share/dakota

Install destination for test/, relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX

DAKOTA_EXAMPLES_INSTALL

share/dakota

Install destination for top-level files like README, relative to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
Table 26 Dakota Python Options

CMake Option

Default

Notes

DAKOTA_PYTHON

ON

Basic Dakota python usage requiring interpreter only

DAKOTA_PYTHON_DIRECT_INTERFACE

OFF

Python direct function evaluation interface

DAKOTA_PYTHON_DIRECT_INTERFACE_NUMPY

ON

Enable NumPy for direct Python interface

DAKOTA_PYTHON_WRAPPER

OFF

Top-level Dakota Python interface (dakota.environment wrapper)

DAKOTA_PYTHON_SURROGATES

OFF

Python interface to surrogates modules

Dakota Sub-packages (TPLs)

This table lists the most common CMake options for enabling or disabling specific Dakota sub-packages. Note that Dakota builds may fail when disabling many of these packages, even if not marked as required, because various combinations of enable/disables aren’t routinely tested.

Table 27 Dakota Package Options

CMake Option

Default

Notes

HAVE_ACRO

ON

HAVE_AMPL

ON

May need to be OFF if compiling with C99 support

HAVE_C3

OFF

HAVE_CONMIN

ON

HAVE_DDACE

ON

HAVE_DEMO_TPL

OFF

HAVE_DFFTPACK

ON

HAVE_DOT

ON

Turns OFF if packages/DOT missing

HAVE_DREAM

ON

HAVE_FFTW

OFF

Off due to GPL-license

HAVE_FSUDACE

ON

HAVE_HOPSPACK

ON

HAVE_JEGA

ON

HAVE_LHS

ON

HAVE_NCSUOPT

ON

HAVE_NL2SOL

ON

HAVE_NLPQL

ON

Turns OFF if packages/NLPQL missing

HAVE_NOMAD

ON

HAVE_NOWPAC

OFF

HAVE_NPSOL

ON

Turns OFF if packages/NPSOL missing

HAVE_OPTPP

ON

HAVE_PECOS

ON

Currently required

HAVE_PSUADE

ON

HAVE_QUESO

OFF

Off due to dependence on GPL-licensed GSL

HAVE_QUESO_GPMSA

OFF

DAKOTA_HAVE_GSL

OFF

Required when HAVE_QUESO=ON

HAVE_ROL

ON

HAVE_SPARSE_GRID

ON

HAVE_SURFPACK

ON

Currently required

Common Issues

Errors running CMake: If you encounter errors running CMake, first inspect the console output/error. The files CMakeOutput.log and CMakeError.log contained in $DAK_BUILD/CMakeFiles are per-probe output and rarely help.

Mixing incompatible compilers: Be careful that incompatible compilers aren’t selected automatically, e.g., mixing g77 with gfortran or mixing compiler vendors. We often see a specific gfortran get combined with system /usr/bin/cc due to CMake probes. Solution: specify which C, C++, and Fortran compilers you want to use, e.g. explictly specify CMAKE_C_COMPILER, CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER, and CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER.

Mixing MPI with incompatible compilers. Solution: explicitly specify MPI_CXX_COMPILER, as well as the standard compilers shown above.

Boost detection or link issues: Mixing a system and custom-installed Boost. Solution: see the guidance on specifying Boost above.

TPLs found in CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: Dakota finds packages, e.g., Trilinos, in an old install tree and mis-configured the current build. Solution: remove the install tree prior to build or try setting CMake find options, e.g., CMAKE_FIND_USE_INSTALL_PREFIX:BOOL=FALSE from https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/find_package.html.