.. _building:

**Building, testing and installing**
===============================================================================

Quick start
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Building FLINT requires:

* GMP, at least version 6.2.1 (https://gmplib.org/)
* MPFR, at least version 4.1.0 (https://mpfr.org/)
* Either of the following build systems:

  * GNU Make together with GNU Autotools (Recommended)
  * CMake (Recommended only for Windows users)

On a typical Linux or Unix-like system where Autotools is available (see below
for instructions using CMake), FLINT can be built and installed as follows:

.. code-block:: bash

    ./bootstrap.sh
    ./configure
    make -j N
    make install

where ``N`` is the number of jobs number allowed to run parallel. Typically, the
fastest way to build is to let ``N`` be the number of threads your CPU plus one,
which can be obtained in Bash through ``$(expr $(nproc) + 1)``.

By default, FLINT only builds a shared library, but a static library can be
built by pushing ``--enable-static`` to ``configure``.

We also recommend that you check that the library works as it should through
``make check``, or ``make -j N check`` for a parallel check, before installing.

For a complete list of build settings, type

.. code-block:: bash

    ./configure --help

An example of a custom configuration command would be

.. code-block:: bash

    ./configure                                         \
        --enable-assert                                 \
        --enable-avx2                                   \
        --with-gmp-include=/home/user1/builds/includes/ \
        --with-gmp-lib=/home/user1/builds/lib/          \
        --with-mpfr=/usr                                \
        --prefix=/home/user1/installations/             \
        CC=clang                                        \
        CFLAGS="-Wall -O3 -march=alderlake"

Library and install paths
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you intend to install the FLINT library and header files, you can specify
where they should be placed by passing ``--prefix=path`` to ``configure``, where
``path`` is the directory under which the ``lib`` and ``include`` directories
exist into which you wish to place the FLINT files when it is installed.

If GMP and MPFR are not installed in the default search path of your compiler
(e.g. ``/usr/include/`` and ``/usr/lib/``), you must specify where they are by
passing their location to configure ``--with-gmp=ABSOLUTE_PATH`` for GMP and
``--with-mpfr=ABSOLUTE_PATH`` for MPFR.
Note that the FLINT build system can handle GMP and MPFR as installed at some
location and as source builds (built from source but not installed).  Though, to
run the FLINT tests, GMP and MPFR needs to be properly installed.

Testing FLINT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The full FLINT test suite can be run using

.. code-block:: bash

    make check

or in parallel on a multicore system using

.. code-block:: bash

    make -j check

Here, ``make -j N check`` is typically the fastest way to build when ``N``
equals to the number of threads your system's CPU has plus one, that is,
``make -j $(expr $(nproc) + 1) check`` typically is the fastest way to check
FLINT.

Number of test iterations
...............................................................................

The number of test iterations can be changed with the
``FLINT_TEST_MULTIPLIER`` environment variable. For example, the
following will only run 10% of the default iterations::

    export FLINT_TEST_MULTIPLIER=0.1
    make check

Conversely, ``FLINT_TEST_MULTIPLIER=10`` will stress test FLINT
by performing 10x the default number of iterations.

Testing single modules
...............................................................................

If you wish to simply check a single module of FLINT you can pass the option
``MOD=modname`` to ``make check``. You can also pass a list of module names:

.. code-block:: bash

    make check MOD=ulong_extras
    make -j N check MOD="fft fmpz_mat"

Testing single functions
...............................................................................

Testing a single function is also possible, although one cannot utilize ``make``
all the way through for this. For example, if you would like to test the
function ``fmpz_add`` and ``fmpz_sub`` in the module ``fmpz``, you run

.. code-block:: bash

    # Build all tests
    make tests
    # Run the test executable for `fmpz' with `fmpz_add' and `fmpz_sub' as inputs
    ./build/fmpz/test/main fmpz_add fmpz_sub

Test coverage
...............................................................................

To obtain coverage statistics for the FLINT test suite, assuming
that ``gcov`` and ``lcov`` are installed, configure
FLINT with ``--enable-coverage``. Then run:

.. code-block:: bash

    make -j N check
    make coverage_html

This will place a coverage report in ``build/coverage``.

Static or dynamic library only
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By default FLINT only builds a shared libraries by default. If you need to build
a static library, you can pass ``--enable-static`` to ``configure``. With this,
``--disable-shared`` can be passed as well to disable the build of a shared
library, which will reduce the building time.

AVX2 instructions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On x86-64 machines with AVX2 support, compiling FLINT with the ``--enable-avx2``
option can improve performance substantially, notably by enabling
the small-prime FFT. Currently this option is not enabled by default.

TLS, reentrancy and single mode
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLINT uses thread local storage by default (``--enable-tls``). However, if
reentrancy is required on systems that do not support this, one can pass
``--disable-tls`` and mutexes will be used instead (requires POSIX). As most
modern systems support thread local storage, it is not recommended to build
FLINT without TLS.

There are two modes in which FLINT may installed: the default "single" mode,
which is faster, but makes use of thread local storage for its memory manager
and to handle threading, and a slower but less complicated "reentrant" mode.
The later is useful when debugging a program where tracing allocations is
important.

If you wish to select the single mode, pass the ``--disable-reentrant`` option
to configure, though note that this is the default. The reentrant mode is
selected by passing the option ``--enable-reentrant`` to configure.

ABI and architecture support
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On some systems, e.g. Sparc and some Macs, more than one ABI is available.
FLINT chooses the ABI based on the CPU type available, however its default
choice can be overridden by passing either ``ABI=64`` or ``ABI=32`` to
configure.

To build on MinGW64 it is necessary to pass ``ABI=64`` to configure, as FLINT
is otherwise unable to distinguish it from MinGW32.

In some cases, it is necessary to override the CPU/OS defaults. This can be done
by specifying the build system triplet to ``configure`` via
``--build=arch-vendor-os``.

It is also possible to override the default CC, AR and CFLAGS used by FLINT by
passing ``CC=full_path_to_compiler``, etc., to FLINT's configure.


CMake build for Windows users
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Windows users, we also provide a way to install FLINT using CMake. Note,
however, that FLINT's CMake script only exists to provide Windows users a way to
install FLINT. For UNIX-type systems, please use Autotools along with GNU Make
instead, as described at the top of this page.

If you wish to install FLINT with CMake on Windows, simply type:

.. code-block:: bash

    mkdir build && cd build
    cmake .. -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
    cmake --build . --target install

Uninstalling FLINT
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To uninstall FLINT with GNU make, type:

.. code-block:: bash

    make uninstall

Now to use FLINT, simply include the appropriate header files for the FLINT
modules you wish to use in your C program.  Then compile your program,
linking against the FLINT library, GMP, MPFR and pthreads with the
options ``-lflint -lmpfr -lgmp -lpthread``.

To clean up the local build files, use:

.. code-block:: bash

    make clean
    make distclean

Assertion checking
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLINT has an assert system. If you want a debug build you can pass
``--enable-assert`` to configure. However, this will slow FLINT considerably,
so asserts should not be enabled (``--disable-assert``, the default) for
deployment.

Linking and running code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is an example program to get started using FLINT:

.. code-block:: c

    #include "flint/flint.h"
    #include "flint/arb.h"

    int main()
    {
        arb_t x;
        arb_init(x);
        arb_const_pi(x, 50 * 3.33);
        arb_printn(x, 50, 0); flint_printf("\n");
        flint_printf("Computed with FLINT-%s\n", flint_version);
        arb_clear(x);
    }

Compile it with::

    gcc test.c -lflint

You may also have to pass the flags ``-lmpfr`` and ``-lgmp`` to the compiler.
If the FLINT header and library files are not in a standard location
such as ``/usr/local``, you may also have to provide flags such as::

    -I/path/to/flint -L/path/to/flint

Finally, to run the program, make sure that the linker
can find ``libflint``. If it is installed in a
nonstandard location, you can for example add this path to the
``LD_LIBRARY_PATH`` environment variable.

The output of the example program should be something like the following::

    [3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751 +/- 4.43e-50]
    Computed with flint-3.0.0