Installing on Mac / ARM Processors

[mkasemer]

There have been sporadic discussion questions regarding installation on newer Mac computers with ARM processors. I had to do this recently on a 2023 MacBook Pro with an M3 Max processor (14 core) running macOS Sonoma 14.5, and decided to summarize the process here since it can be relatively straightforward. I think this should also work for older M1 and M2 processors. The big trick is that the default system compilers are ill-suited and don't play well with OpenMP. So, if you ever want to run in parallel, you'll have to use different compilers. I recommend LLVM.

To begin, be sure to install gsl, libomp, and llvm. This is easiest via brew:

brew install gsl
brew install libomp
brew install llvm

Next, set some environment variables. I suggest to add these to your '~/.zshrc` file so you only have to do it once:

export CC=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang
export CXX=/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang++
export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/include"

This is where brew will install llvm by default. If you choose to install yourself or install to a different directory, set the paths appropriately. If you add these to your ~/.zshrc file, be sure to source ~/.zshrc to activate these variables.

Finally, install via the normal method. In the neper directory:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../src
make
sudo make install

I'll note that some tests will fail across all modules (T, M, V), but that's for a different discussion. This will at least get you operational, albeit with some potentially reduced functionality. As always, if you want the best experience, I suggest Ubuntu or other similar Linux distributions. However, it is ostensibly a full install:

========================    N   e   p   e   r    =======================
Info   : A software package for polycrystal generation and meshing.
Info   : Version 4.9.1-5-devel
Info   : Built with: gsl|muparser|opengjk|openmp|nlopt|libscotch (full)
Info   : Running on 14 threads.
Info   : <https://neper.info>
Info   : Copyright (C) 2003-2022, and GNU GPL'd, by Romain Quey.
========================================================================

[rquey]

@mkasemer - Thanks. It would be very interesting to convert this into a tutorial, as was done for Installing Neper on Ubuntu 22, so that users can find it more easily. Would also be interesting to loop with @mechlin maybe, who has tried a lot in the past months.

I myself have a 2024 M3 Macbook Air at hand and could try to follow such a (much needed) tutorial.

[mkasemer]

Yes, this is something I can work on (it's now on the list).

@mechlin - you can give the above a try and let me know how it goes...

[mechlin]

@mkasemer - indeed compiles fine using your steps on a MacBook Pro M2 Max. Definitely getting plenty of make test failures. Are you using the standard brew versions of gmsh, asymptote, texlive, and povray? Maybe some guidance to other users about whether or not they should worry about make test failures would be useful.

[mkasemer]

@mechlin I am using everything that is up-to-date / standard in the current Brew (i.e., I did not specify any special versions).

Below is my list of failures, which I have not inspected at all. The last time I got this working, many of the failed tests were actually correct, but the output files were just slightly different thus throwing a false error. Also, I realize now that I don't have povray installed... Edit: also maybe gmsh, this was a very hasty install with little testing :)

84% tests passed, 78 tests failed out of 477

Total Test time (real) =  14.77 sec

The following tests FAILED:
	  5 - T/domain_rodrigues_cubic_per (Failed)
	  7 - T/domain_rodrigues_hexagonal_per (Failed)
	 15 - T/domain_stdtriangle (Failed)
	 27 - T/m2_morpho_aspratio_gg (Failed)
	 32 - T/m2_morpho_gg (Failed)
	 33 - T/m2_morpho_lamellar_w (Failed)
	 34 - T/m2_morpho_lamellar_w2 (Failed)
	 44 - T/m3_morpho_aspratio_gg (Failed)
	 49 - T/m3_morpho_gg (Failed)
	 50 - T/m3_morpho_lamellar_w (Failed)
	 51 - T/m3_morpho_lamellar_w2 (Failed)
	 55 - T/m3_reg (Failed)
	 58 - T/morpho_aspratio_gg (Failed)
	 66 - T/morpho_gg (Failed)
	 67 - T/morpho_lamellar_w (Failed)
	 68 - T/morpho_lamellar_w2 (Failed)
	 75 - T/morphooptideltamax (Failed)
	 77 - T/morphooptigrid (Failed)
	 78 - T/morphooptilogdis (Failed)
	 79 - T/morphooptilogval (Failed)
	 80 - T/morphooptilogvar (Failed)
	 81 - T/morphooptini_packing (Failed)
	 82 - T/morphooptini_random (Failed)
	 83 - T/morphooptinistep (Failed)
	 84 - T/morphooptiobj_FL2 (Failed)
	 85 - T/morphooptiobj_FL2w (Failed)
	 86 - T/morphooptiobj_ad (Failed)
	 87 - T/morphooptiobj_cvm (Failed)
	 88 - T/morphooptismooth (Failed)
	 89 - T/morphooptistop_itermax (Failed)
	 92 - T/morphooptistop_val (Failed)
	140 - M/cl (Failed)
	141 - M/cl_expr (Failed)
	144 - M/clmin (Failed)
	145 - M/clratio (Failed)
	146 - M/cut (Failed)
	147 - M/dim (Failed)
	148 - M/dim2 (Failed)
	149 - M/dim_expr (Failed)
	150 - M/faset (Failed)
	153 - M/interface (Failed)
	154 - M/interface2 (Failed)
	155 - M/interface3 (Failed)
	156 - M/mesh2dalgo_dela (Failed)
	157 - M/mesh2dalgo_fron (Failed)
	158 - M/mesh2dalgo_mead (Failed)
	159 - M/mesh2dalgo_netg (Failed)
	160 - M/mesh3dalgo_netggmne (Failed)
	161 - M/mesh3dalgo_netggmsh (Failed)
	162 - M/mesh3dalgo_netgnetg (Failed)
	163 - M/meshing (Failed)
	165 - M/meshqualdisexpr (Failed)
	166 - M/meshqualexpr (Failed)
	167 - M/meshqualmin (Failed)
	168 - M/morpho_cube (Failed)
	169 - M/msh4 (Failed)
	170 - M/nset1 (Failed)
	171 - M/nset2 (Failed)
	172 - M/nset3 (Failed)
	173 - M/order (Failed)
	174 - M/order_dim2 (Failed)
	179 - M/part_dim2 (Failed)
	180 - M/pl (Failed)
	181 - M/rcl (Failed)
	182 - M/rcl_expr (Failed)
	185 - M/remesh1 (Failed)
	186 - M/remesh2 (Failed)
	187 - M/remesh3 (Failed)
	188 - M/remesh4 (Failed)
	189 - M/rodrigues_per_cubic (Failed)
	190 - M/rodrigues_per_hexagonal (Failed)
	196 - M/statelsetco (Failed)
	202 - M/stateltco (Failed)
	204 - M/tesr_dim2 (Failed)
	207 - M/tess2ddim3 (Failed)
	225 - V/asymptote (Failed)
	341 - V/povray (Failed)
	364 - V/slicemeshelt1d (Failed)

[rquey]

I tried to install on an M3. After installing Brew itself, I installed Gmsh and Povray using

brew install gmsh
brew install povray

I then configured Neper like so:

cmake -DBUILD_TESTING_MODE=Minimal -DHAVE_OPENMP=OFF ..

And here is what I get:

99% tests passed, 4 tests failed out of 480

Total Test time (real) = 224.78 sec

The following tests FAILED:
	  5 - T/domain_rodrigues_cubic_per (Failed)
	  7 - T/domain_rodrigues_hexagonal_per (Failed)
	 87 - T/morphooptinistep (Failed)
	367 - V/slicemeshelt1d (Failed)

which are real errors.

I've not been able to debug as gdb isn't available and lldb won't return any useful information (even with Neper compiled in Debug mode).

[mkasemer]

Okay, I have brew'd gmsh and povray, and configured with -DBUILD_TESTING_MODE=Minimal -DHAVE_OPENMP=OFF for sake of comparison. I am still using llvm.

When testing:

99% tests passed, 4 tests failed out of 477

Total Test time (real) = 231.73 sec

The following tests FAILED:
	  5 - T/domain_rodrigues_cubic_per (Failed)
	  7 - T/domain_rodrigues_hexagonal_per (Failed)
	 83 - T/morphooptinistep (Failed)
	364 - V/slicemeshelt1d (Failed)

When building with -DBUILD_TESTING_MODE=Minimal only, testing gives:

95% tests passed, 25 tests failed out of 477

Total Test time (real) =  38.27 sec

The following tests FAILED:
	  5 - T/domain_rodrigues_cubic_per (Failed)
	  7 - T/domain_rodrigues_hexagonal_per (Failed)
	 83 - T/morphooptinistep (Failed)
	140 - M/cl (Failed)
	141 - M/cl_expr (Failed)
	144 - M/clmin (Failed)
	145 - M/clratio (Failed)
	146 - M/cut (Failed)
	150 - M/faset (Failed)
	159 - M/mesh2dalgo_netg (Failed)
	161 - M/mesh3dalgo_netggmsh (Failed)
	163 - M/meshing (Failed)
	166 - M/meshqualexpr (Failed)
	168 - M/morpho_cube (Failed)
	169 - M/msh4 (Failed)
	170 - M/nset1 (Failed)
	172 - M/nset3 (Failed)
	173 - M/order (Failed)
	180 - M/pl (Failed)
	185 - M/remesh1 (Failed)
	186 - M/remesh2 (Failed)
	187 - M/remesh3 (Failed)
	189 - M/rodrigues_per_cubic (Failed)
	196 - M/statelsetco (Failed)
	364 - V/slicemeshelt1d (Failed)

I suspect, though have not looked, that the increase in failed tests is due to minor differences in write. If you recall in the past, we had similar issues, and it turned out that the meshes were functionally identical, but on lines where write order did not matter, there were differences between the two files. I will look into this further.

But sure, I think we have true failures for the same four tests. Not so bad, actually.

Gmesh is, unsurprisingly, horribly slow when installed via brew.

Finally, some cmake issues that are probably easily fixed, but just highlighting them here as I see it:

mkasemer@bravais build % cmake ../src 
CMake Deprecation Warning at CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:85 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:125 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:91 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:125 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:101 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:125 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

-- Found OpenMP_C: -fopenmp=libomp (found version "5.1")
-- Found OpenMP_CXX: -fopenmp=libomp (found version "5.1")
-- Could NOT find system Scotch - using built-in
CMake Deprecation Warning at contrib/scotch/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


-- Could NOT find system NLopt - using built-in
CMake Deprecation Warning at contrib/nlopt/CMakeLists.txt:15 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at contrib/muparser/CMakeLists.txt:2 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at contrib/ut/src/CMakeLists.txt:4 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:85 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/ut/src/CMakeLists.txt:99 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:91 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/ut/src/CMakeLists.txt:99 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:101 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/ut/src/CMakeLists.txt:99 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Deprecation Warning at contrib/orilib/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:85 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/orilib/CMakeLists.txt:101 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:91 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/orilib/CMakeLists.txt:101 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Warning (dev) at cmake/FindGSL.cmake:101 (EXEC_PROGRAM):
  Policy CMP0153 is not set: The exec_program command should not be called.
  Run "cmake --help-policy CMP0153" for policy details.  Use the cmake_policy
  command to set the policy and suppress this warning.

  Use execute_process() instead.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  contrib/orilib/CMakeLists.txt:101 (find_package)
This warning is for project developers.  Use -Wno-dev to suppress it.

CMake Deprecation Warning at neut/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at neper_t/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at neper_m/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at neper_v/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


CMake Deprecation Warning at neper_s/CMakeLists.txt:5 (cmake_minimum_required):
  Compatibility with CMake < 3.5 will be removed from a future version of
  CMake.

  Update the VERSION argument <min> value or use a ...<max> suffix to tell
  CMake that the project does not need compatibility with older versions.


-- Neper is set to be installed in: /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/etc
-- Configuring done (0.3s)
-- Generating done (0.1s)
-- Build files have been written to: /Users/mkasemer/code/neper/build