VisIt

Installing VisIt 1.10.0

These are notes from Rupert Gladstone. I would need to re-build visit to ensure that these notes are correct.

Download the build VisIt script.

Download the VisIt sources from the downloads page.

Under Setup in the build VisIt script is a list of required 3rd party software. Download all the 'must have' tarballs and HDF5, NetCDF, szip. These can be downloaded from the bottom of the VisIt downloads page.

I also had to download Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz from here, prompted by a message in the build log.

If you want to use an existing installation of the 3rd party software (note that that in some cases VisIt requires older versions) you can force this with the following VisIt:compile_hack hack (uses Python as an example):

From the directory you run build_visit from, run the command:

  mkdir -p visit/python/2.5/linux-x86_64_gcc-4.1.2 (last bit is architecture/compiler dependant)

This will cause build_visit to think python is already installed, skipping the compile/install of it. However, after build_visit completes, you'll have to change your `host`.conf. Simply change the

  PYDIR=/some/long/directory/name

line to:

  PYDIR=/usr

This will cause VisIt to use your system's python.

Run the build VisIt script.

Note that this should give a valid install of VisIt, but VisIt will still not functiona properly when used remotely via ssh/exceed. This is because exceed does not support openGL. See also this Linux forum comment and the exceed website for more info. It would appear that exceed3d could be purchased to get round this problem.