1. Prerequisites

1.1. Compilers

For building ComFLOW and/or ComFLOW plug-ins a recent Fortran and C compiler are required. Using a recent compiler version may be beneficial for program performance and reduces the risk of (internal) compiler errors.

ComFLOW uses parts of the Fortran 2003 and Fortran 2008 standards. As a rule-of-thumb ComFLOW supports the latest two major versions of a compiler.

Compiler	Minimum version
GNU Fortran/C(++)	6.3
Intel Fortran/C(++)	2017
PGI Fortran	currently not supported
NAG Fortran	status unknown

1.2. CMake

The ComFLOW software is designed to run on multiple operating systems and to support various Fortran and C compilers. To ensure cross-platform and cross-compiler compatibility the CMake build system is used. This system is capable of producing native build environments such as GNU make files on Linux or Visual Studio solutions on Windows.

The latest version of CMake may be downloaded from https://cmake.org/download/.

Note that the minimum required version may change in time and can be found in the preamble of the file CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0)

If CMake is not installed, or if the installed version is out-of-date, it is recommended to perform a local installation of CMake. This can be done as follows (replacing version numbers if necessary):

mkdir ~/bin/cmake
wget https://cmake.org/files/v3.13/cmake-3.13.0-rc2-Linux-x86_64.sh
./cmake-3.13.0-rc2-Linux-x86_64.sh

Make sure the local installation is found before the original version. This can be done by including the following statements in the startup script (typically ~/.bashrc):

export PATH="~/bin/cmake/bin:$PATH"

1.3. Git

Git is used for version management of the ComFLOW source code including all of its (third-party) dependencies.

On Windows TortoiseGit may be used, which can be downloaded from https://tortoisegit.org/download/. On most Linux systems Git is already installed. If otherwise, it may be installed using the command sudo apt-get install git.