Running Multivac

Requirements

The only requirement is a C++ compiler compliant with the ANSI/ISO/IEC C++ standard (1998).

Under Linux, Multivac can be compiled by g++, the well known GNU C++ compiler. It has been successfully tested with versions 3.2 and 3.3 of g++; but versions strictly before 3.0 are not good enough. Multivac works fine with the Intel C++ Compiler too (tested with version 7). Under Unix, proprietary compilers should compile Multivac, even if it was not tested.

Under Windows, the Borland C++ compiler was able to compile previous versions of Multivac, but the current version cannot be compiled with it. Very slight changes are needed (except if Borland has improved its compiler with respect to the standard compliance); they can be achieved on demand if someone needs to compile Multivac with the Borland compiler. The Microsoft compiler is so far from the C++ standard that, most probably, it will never be able to compile Multivac.

Installing Multivac

Download the latest version of Multivac on its homepage http://spacetown.free.fr/fronts/. Expand the tarball (tar zxvf Multivac-[version].tgz), it will create a directory named Multivac-[version] ($MULTIVAC hereafter). In this directory, you will find the GNU GPL (file license), examples (files *.cpp), a makefile (makefile) and the source code itself in the directory includes.

Running Multivac

Let's compile examples provided with Multivac. In $MULTIVAC, open track.cpp which is the first example. Find the line:

  string Directory = "/home/vivien/Computations/Fronts/";
/home/vivien/Computations/Fronts/ is the directory where results will be stored. Change it according to your directories tree. Notice that this output directory must exist; Multivac won't create it.

Then open makefile. Most probably you don't have to modify anything. You may change the compiler. For instance, you may want to change g++ into g++-3.2 if the default compiler is g++-2.95 on your system.

Type make on the command line (still in $MULTIVAC) and it should compile successfully track.cpp.

Launch ./track from the command line. The program should terminate normally within a few seconds.

You might want to compile other examples. You can compile all of them through: make all. Before compilation, change the output directory, as for track.cpp.