Download and Compilation¶

Download¶

To get limbo, simply clone the source code from https://github.com/resibots/limbo with git, or download it as a zip.

Dependencies¶

Required¶

Boost , with the following libraries: filesystem, system, unit_test_framework (test), program_options, and thread; Boost is mainly used for the interaction with the system.
Eigen 3, Eigen3 is a highly-efficient, templated-based C++ library for linear algebra.

Optional but highly recommended¶

NLOpt with C++ binding:

./configure --with-cxx --enable-shared --without-python --without-matlab --without-octave
sudo make install

libcmaes. Be careful that gtest (which is a dependency of libcmaes) needs to be manually compiled even if you install it with your package manager (e.g. apt-get). Follow the instructions here, reproduced for your convenience:
```
sudo apt-get install libgtest-dev
sudo cd /usr/src/gtest
sudo mkdir build && cd build
sudo cmake ..
sudo make
sudo cp *.a /usr/lib
```
Intel TBB is not mandatory, but highly recommended; TBB is used in Limbo to take advantage of multicore architectures.

Optional¶

Intel MKL is supported as backend for Eigen. In our experience, it provided best results when compiling with Intel’s Compiler (ICC)
Sferes2 if you plan to use the multi-objective bayesian optimization algorithms (experimental).

Compilation¶

We use the WAF build system, which is provided with the limbo source code. To know why we use waf (and not CMAKE, SCONS, traditional makefiles, etc.), see the FAQ.

Like most build systems, it has a configuration and build steps, described bellow.

Configuration¶

Caution

Make sure that the waf file has execution rights.

The first step is to configure your waf environment. For this, assuming that you are in the root directory of Limbo, you have to run the command:

./waf configure

If everything is okay, you should expect an output like this:

Setting top to                           : /path/to/limbo
Setting out to                           : /path/to/limbo/build
Checking for 'g++' (c++ compiler)        : /usr/bin/g++
Checking for 'gcc' (c compiler)          : /usr/bin/gcc
Checking boost includes                  : 1_55
Checking boost libs                      : ok
Checking Intel TBB includes              : not found
Checking for compiler option to support OpenMP : -fopenmp
Checking Intel MKL includes                    : not found
['-Wall', '-std=c++11', '-O3', '-march=native', '-g']

The actual ouput may differ, depending on your configuration and installed libraries.

Waf should automatically detect the libraries if they where installed in the default folders, but if it doesn’t, you can use the following command-line options to indicate where they are:

--libcmaes=/path/to/libcmaes
--nlopt=/path/to/nlopt
--tbb=/path/to/tbb
--mkl=/path/to/mkl
--sferes=/path/to/sferes2
--boost-includes /path/to/boost-includes [.h]
--boost-libs /path/to/boost-libraries [.a, .so, .dynlib]
--eigen /path/to/eigen3

Note that Sferes2 won’t be used unless you specify it’s installation folder. You can also specify a different compiler than the default, setting the environment variables CC and CXX.

A full example:

CC=icc CXX=icpc ./waf configure --sferes ~/sferes2 --mkl ~/intel/mkl --tbb ~/intel/tbb

Build¶

The second step is to run the build command:

./waf build

Depending on your compiler, there may be some warnings, but the output should end with the following lines:

'build' finished successfully (time in sec)

Building the documentation¶

Note

This section is only useful for developers who need to update the documentation.

Install sphinx via pip:

sudo pip install Sphinx
sudo pip install sphinxcontrib-bibtex

Warning

On Mac OSX, do not use brew install sphinx because this is not the right sphinx

Install the Resibots theme for Sphinx:

git clone https://github.com/resibots/sphinx_resibots_theme
export SPHINX_RESIBOTS_THEME="/home/me/path/to/sphinx_resibots_theme"

Install breathe via pip:

sudo pip install breathe

Install doxygen via your package manager (e.g. apt-get / brew):

apt-get install doxygen

In the doc directory:

make html

About sphinx and ReStructuredText:

There is a tutorial,
Primer for ReStructuredText, the markup language of Sphinx,
markup specific to Sphinx,
About C++ in Sphinx
Breathe (bridge between sphinx and doxygen)