Running Spheral++

Spheral++ is just a set of extensions to the Python language, so running Spheral++ is simply a matter of producing a Python script appropriate for your problem using the Spheral++ extension objects (available via the import Spheral command). The Spheral++ distribution includes several example and test scripts which demonstrate setups for several standard test cases. The results of one such test (the Sod shock tube) can be found at
http://spheral.sf.net/SodExample.html.

When you build Spheral++ it installs all of its components in the top directory where you installed the source, including Python. For instance, if you installed the source in /home/username/Spheral, then after you finish building Spheral++ there will be a /home/username/Spheral/bin directory containing a python executable. If you built for a parallel architecture there will also be a pyMPI executable there which you will want to use. Once you run one of these executables you can simply issue the command import Spheral and all of the components will be available in the module Spheral. Exactly how you run the executable will depend on your architecture (and whether you configured for parallel or serial). Here are some example invocations assuming you have a python script example.py which contains the setup for your problem, and your source was installed in /home/username/Spheral:

• If you configured for a serial executable:

  /home/username/Spheral/bin/python -i example.py
  

• For a 4 way parallel run on a typical MPICH based parallel machine (if you configured for a parallel executable):

  mpirun -np 4 /home/username/Spheral/bin/pyMPI -i example.py
  

• For a 4 way parallel run on a SLURM based parallel machine (again assuming you configured for a parallel executable):

  srun -n 4 -N 2 /home/username/Spheral/bin/pyMPI -i example.py
  

• Similarly for a 4 way parallel run on an IBM AIX parallel machine:

  poe /home/username/Spheral/bin/pyMPI -i example.py -nodes 1 -procs 4