Building.md

Building SWIFT

SWIFT will be built out-of-source, which means that all intermediate and final files are not entangled with the sources. This allows keeping the source tree clean, all generated resources by the build can be quickly removed. In addition, multiple SWIFT build flavors can be build using the single source tree.

file(GLOB sources src/*.f90)
add_executable(${SWIFT_EXE} ${sources})

Generate the Build files

Make the swift directory the current working directory. All command examples below assume this.

$ cd <dir>/swift

Now, create all build files. Issue one of the following commands to configure and generate the build files. This does not build SWIFT yet. CMake will process the content of the file CMakeLists.txt and will generate the build system.

The command below reads the CMakeLists.txt source file from the current directory ., creates a directory build and stores all resources for the build in it.

$ cmake -S . -B build
  <or short>
$ cmake -B build

You can force cmake to use the GCC gfortran compiler.

$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER=gfortran

If you want to use Intel Fortran to build SWIFT, configure as below. It defaults to gfortran otherwise.

The Intel ifort Fortran compiler will be deprecated in 2024 and is being replaced with the LLVM-based version, ifx. Therefore, the use of ifx is preferred. To generate the build files on Linux:

$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER=ifort
  <or better>
$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER=ifx

On Windows you can use VS Code to build SWIFT or you can issue the commands below to use the different compilers:

$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET=fortran=ifort
$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET=fortran=ifx
$ cmake -B build -G "Ninja" -D CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER=gfortran

Note: ifort and ifx use a different generator toolset than `gfortran`` on Windows, also use the windows default CLI, not Powershell to build on the command line.

If you want to create a Debug version of SWIFT that includes symbols for debugging, configure as below. Use the Release flag for building a release version instead.

$ cmake -B build -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

If you want to delete all files created by cmake, simply remove the build folder and start over, e.g. on Linux

$ rm -rf build

or using the Windows terminal:

> rd /s /q build

Compiling/Linking the Executable

To build the SWIFT executable, use the cmake --build command in the swift directory. It will process the previously generated files in build and place all intermediate resources (*.o, *.mod files) into the build directory.

 $ cmake --build build

Use the -j option to compile the source files in parallel. The example below is using 8 CPU cores in parallel. This greatly speeds up the compile process.

 $ cmake --build build -j 8

You can find the SWIFT executable in the build folder as swift-<version>-<arch>.exe (for Windows). The Linux and Mac executable will not have an .exe extension.

Call the build target clean to remove all generated object files (.o) and modules files (.mod). Alternatively, you can do (cd build; make clean).

 $ cmake --build build --target clean

Building the SWIFT model is supported for various platforms and compilers as described in the Readme.md file. It contains the specific instructions for Windows and Mac builds.

Installing

Finally, you can install the swift executable by using the --install CMake option. Specify the installation directory that will receive a copy of the SWIFT executable, generated in build. The --prefix option takes as an argument the base of the binary directory. Not using --prefix will copy swift into the system default binary directory. You don't have to use this step if you want to manage moving the swat executable yourself.

$ cmake --install build --prefix ~/bin