The following instructions show how to install SpECTRE and its dependencies on Apple Silicon Macs. Apple Silicon is an arm64 architecture, in contrast to the x86-64 architecture that SpECTRE usually targets. These instructions will result in an Apple Silicon native build of SpECTRE.

Note: Floating-point exception trapping is not currently supported on Apple Silicon.

0. Install the xcode command-line tools.

Install the xcode command-line tools, which include the clang compiler, etc. Run the following command in the terminal:

xcode-select --install

1. Clone spectre and make a directory to install prerequisites

First, make a directory to hold some prerequisites that spectre depends on. Name this directory whatever you like, and set SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT to its value. These instructions, as an example, set this to the apps directory in the user's home folder.

cd $HOME
git clone git@github.com:sxs-collaboration/spectre.git
cd spectre
export SPECTRE_HOME=$(pwd)
export SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT=$HOME/apps
mkdir $SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT
cd $SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT
mkdir src
cd src

2. Install python dependencies

Spectre depends on python and some python packages. There are different ways to install an arm64-native python stack. The following instructions show how to do this using the Python 3 interpreter bundled with macOS.

cd $SPECTRE_HOME
 
# Create a Python environment
python3 -m venv ./env --upgrade-deps
 
# Activate the Python environment
. ./env/bin/activate
 
# Install Python packages
pip install -r support/Python/requirements.txt \
  -r support/Python/dev_requirements.txt
 
# Optionally install additional packages you might want, like Jupyter
pip install jupyterlab

3. Install dependencies with Homebrew

Most of spectre's dependencies beyond python can be installed using the homebrew package manager. First, if you haven't already, install Homebrew by following the instructions on the homebrew homepage. Then, run the following to install a fortran compiler and other dependencies:

brew install gcc
brew install boost gsl cmake doxygen
brew install ccache autoconf automake jemalloc hdf5 pybind11 yaml-cpp

4. Install remaining dependencies

Here, install the remaining dependencies that cannot be installed with homebrew or miniforge. You can install them from source manually, or use the Spack package manager.

Install manually

export SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT=$HOME/apps

cd $SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT
mkdir blaze
pushd blaze
curl -L https://bitbucket.org/blaze-lib/blaze/downloads/blaze-3.8.tar.gz \
> blaze-3.8.tar.gz
tar -xf blaze-3.8.tar.gz
mv blaze-3.8 include
popd
 
git clone https://github.com/edouarda/brigand.git
 
# Need master branch of libxsmm to support Apple Silicon
git clone https://github.com/hfp/libxsmm.git
pushd libxsmm
make
popd
 
pushd ./src
git clone https://github.com/Libsharp/libsharp.git
cd libsharp
 
# Do not use compiler flag -march=native (unsupported on Apple Silicon)
sed "s/-march=native//" configure.ac > configure.ac.mod
mv configure.ac.mod configure.ac
 
autoupdate
autoconf
./configure
make
mv auto $SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT/libsharp
popd

Next, clone, patch, and install charm++ v7.0.0.

git clone https://github.com/UIUC-PPL/charm
pushd charm
git checkout v7.0.0
./build LIBS multicore-darwin-arm8 --with-production -g3 -j
popd

Lastly, install Catch2. Note that catch2 v2.13.7 is required, and homebrew can only install v3. Catch2 is a header only package, so no need to build separately.

git clone https://github.com/catchorg/Catch2.git
pushd Catch2
git checkout v2.13.7
popd

Install with Spack

# Download spack
cd ~
git clone -c feature.manyFiles=true https://github.com/spack/spack.git
cd spack
# Switch to latest release
git checkout releases/latest
# Load shell support
. ./share/spack/setup-env.sh
# Find some system packages so we don't have to install them all from source
spack external find
spack external find python
# Install dependencies
spack install \
  blaze@3.8.2 \
  brigand@master \
  catch2@2.8:2 \
  charmpp@7.0.0: backend=multicore \
  libxsmm@main \
  libsharp~mpi~openmp

5. Configure and build SpECTRE

Create a build directory in a location of your choice, e.g.

cd ${SPECTRE_HOME}
mkdir build
cd build

Next, configure SpECTRE using the following CMake command. If you installed dependencies with Spack, you can use spack find -p to retrieve the root directories of the packages and replace them in the command below.

cmake \
-D CMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang \
-D CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
-D CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER=gfortran \
-D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
-D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF \
-D MEMORY_ALLOCATOR=SYSTEM \
-D CHARM_ROOT=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/charm/multicore-darwin-arm8 \
-D SPECTRE_TEST_TIMEOUT_FACTOR=5 \
-D LIBXSMM_ROOT=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/libxsmm/ \
-D BLAZE_ROOT=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/blaze/ \
-D BRIGAND_ROOT=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/brigand/ \
-D LIBSHARP_ROOT=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/libsharp/ \
-D CATCH_INCLUDE_DIR=${SPECTRE_DEPS_ROOT}/Catch2/single_include/catch2/ \
..

Finally, build and test SpECTRE. E.g., on a Mac with 10 cores,

make -j10 unit-tests
make -j10 test-executables
ctest --output-on-failure -j10