Building Singular from source

These are the generic installation instructions for experts, see

[Step by Step Installation Instructions for Singular](Step by Step Installation Instructions for Singular)

for step by step instructions.

Build the development branch of Singular as follows:

1. as prerequisite autotools (>=2.62), gmp (>= 4.2), are needed, furthermore we recommend to use NTL (>= 5.0) configured with NTL_GMP_LIP=on (for further details see NTL Documentation), FLINT (>=2.4) which depends on MPFR (>=3.0.0) , and readline
2. get the sources with git clone -b spielwiese git://github.com/Singular/Sources.git <directory_name>
3. run <abs_directory_name_from_above>/autogen.sh (formerly known as for_Hans_with_love.sh) from the root directory
4. create and switch to your temporary build directory. Do not build Singular in the source folder itself!
5. run <abs_directory_name_from_above>/configure --prefix=<destination path> (builds release version)
6. make (or make -jN where N is the number of the your CPU cores + 1)
7. make -jN check (where N is as above) will build and run simple unit-tests for most units (optional but encouraged)
8. make install
9. developers are also encouraged to run make distcheck

Static version can be built as follows:

• use the following configure arguments: --with-readline=static --disable-shared --enable-static --enable-p-procs-static --without-pic

Note that no dynamic modules will be built and installed!

Debug version of Singular

• use the following configure arguments: --enable-debug --disable-optimizationflags

Test the Spielwiese Singular as follows:

• the test-suites from Tst/ can be run, for example, as follows:
  1. cd Tst/
  2. ln -s <abs_destination path>/bin/Singular
  3. after the above symbolic-linking one can simply run ./regress.cmd something.{lst,tst}, where .lst files are just lists of tests, which are .tst files

Build the old master Singular as follows:

1. get the sources with git clone -b trunk git://github.com/Singular2/Sources.git <directory_name>
2. cd <directory_name_from_above>
3. run ./configure from the root directory
4. make install (or make -jN install, where N as above), and yes it should really be install!
5. everything will be put to the newly created directory "$Architecture-$OS/" (e.g. x86_64-Linux, ix86-Linux etc.)

Coverage testing with lcov (thanks to Jakob Kroeger)

1. make sure that gcov is present and install a recent lcov (>= 1.10)
2. configure and build Spielwiese (IN SOURCE TREE!) together with the following FLAGS:

LDFLAGS+="-lgcov" 
CFLAGS+="-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage -g"
CXXFLAGS+="-fprofile-arcs -ftest-coverage -g"

1. if necessary clean-up lcov-state-files with: lcov -z -d .
2. run tests (e.g. Tst/regress.cmd -s Singular/Singular Tst/Short.lst)
3. collect coverage data into coverage.cov with lcov -c -d . -o coverage.cov
4. optionally remove unnecessary directories: lcov -r coverage.cov '/usr/include/*' > coverage2.cov
5. generate HTML overview pages under GenHtmlDir/ with genhtml -o GenHtmlDir coverage.cov

For instance, a recent test coverage for Singular (_static 64-bit build with optimization, gfanlib, pyobjects, countedref using NTL, MPIR (as GMP), FLINT, readline, git id: e86e21bd*, on Linux, with GCC 4.8.2_20131219) on our testsuite (with ~2420 tests) and unittests is:

• Lines: 65.6 %, Functions: 58.5 %
• Lines: 67.6 %, Functions: 57.4 %

See also Use gcov and lcov to know your test coverage