For acute installation issues, please post on the corresponding OpenFOAM Installation forum at CFD-Online.

Maintainer: The current maintainer of this page is Wyldckat (talk).

This page explains how to install the foam-extend project on various Linux distributions (the other main OSes have their own pages: Windows and Mac OS X). If you have installed foam-extend on a platform that is not mentioned here or had to take other/additional steps for successful installation, please contribute and edit this page or post at OpenFOAM Installation forum at CFD-Online (and send a message to the maintainer).

To quote^[1] from the release notes of the project:

The foam-extend project is a fork of the OpenFOAM® open source library for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It is an open project welcoming and integrating contributions from all users and developers. Previously known as OpenFOAM-dev and OpenFOAM-extend, it contains bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as extensions and additional features provided by community contributors (see file ListOfContributors), such as dynamic mesh and topological change support, turbomachinery extensions including general grid interpolation (GGI), cyclic GGI and mixing plane, block-coupled matrix support, implicitly coupled conjugate heat transfer and other physics coupling, finite area method, comprehensive dynamic mesh (motion and topological changes) capability and GPU support. For a full list, see below and previous release notes at: [1]

Version 4.0, nicknamed "Guimaraes", is the current version of foam-extend. The release continues the tradition and spirit of the original FOAM code developed by prof. Jasak and Mr. Weller during their time at Imperial College and released as the general purpose CFD/CCM package by Nabla Ltd. in 2000. In this spirit, we reverted 18 December 2013 to the original numbering scheme (foam-2.3.2, 13 December 2004) as release number 3.0. Visit foam-extend.org for more information.

OPENFOAM is a registered trademark of ESI Group. OpenFOAM-extend and foam-extend are a community effort not endorsed by ESI Group.

↑ http://sourceforge.net/p/foam-extend/foam-extend-4.0/ci/master/tree/ReleaseNotes.txt

In the following chapters and sections is explained how to generally install foam-extend-4.0 and related dependencies, such as ParaView, although you should first refer to the folder doc/buildInstructions/ on the official repository for dedicated instructions for each supported Operating System.

1 Installation Instructions

The following sections describe two ways on how to install foam-extend 4.0 on Linux Distributions. For instructions on how to install on Mac OS X and Windows, see the respective wiki pages:

1.1 Installing from binary package

Binary packages are available for Ubuntu 16.04 as well as Fedora 24.

Download

Packages can be downloaded on SourceForge.net:

Install packages

For Ubuntu (and similar), download .deb package and run:

software-center foam-extend-4.0_amd64_Ubuntu1604_8bc571e.deb

For Fedora (and similar), download .rpm package and run:

sudo dnf localinstall foam-extend-4.0-1.fc24.x86_64_8bc571e.rpm

Setup user directory

See chapter First steps.

1.2 Installing from source code

System preparations

The preparations depend on the Linux Distribution being used, therefore please go to the following sub-pages for the respective details:

Installation/Linux/foam-extend-4.0/Ubuntu

Installation/Linux/foam-extend-4.0/openSUSE

If you installed on a system that is not mentioned on the pages above, please contribute and add it to the respective page.

Get the source code

The recommended way is to get the source code through git source code management system. This way, you can get updates and bugfixes easily by running "git pull". To install into the default location run:
```
cd ~
mkdir foam
cd foam
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/foam-extend/foam-extend-4.0 foam-extend-4.0
```
If for some reason the official Git repository is not working, you can try using one of the following mirrors:
- Extend's official repository (https mode, if you're behind a firewall):
```
git clone http://git.code.sf.net/p/foam-extend/foam-extend-4.0 foam-extend-4.0
```
- Mirror at repo.or.cz repository:
```
git clone git://repo.or.cz/foam-extend-4.0.git foam-extend-4.0
```
- Mirror at repo.or.cz repository (http mode, if you're behind a firewall):
```
git clone http://repo.or.cz/foam-extend-4.0.git foam-extend-4.0
```
- Mirror Unofficial-Extend-Project-Mirror@github repository:
```
git clone https://github.com/Unofficial-Extend-Project-Mirror/foam-extend-foam-extend-4.0.git foam-extend-4.0
```

Compile

Set the environment variables and add them to your initial shell settings, simply by running the following commands:
- On bash (if unsure whether you are using bash, run "echo $SHELL"):
```
cd ~/foam/foam-extend-4.0
source etc/bashrc
 
echo "alias fe40='source \$HOME/foam/foam-extend-4.0/etc/bashrc'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
```
- On csh:
```
cd ~/foam/foam-extend-4.0
source etc/cshrc
 
echo "alias fe40 'source $HOME/foam/foam-extend-4.0/etc/cshrc'" >> $HOME/.cshrc
```
Note: This last line means that whenever you start a new terminal window or tab, you should run the alias command associated to the foam-extend 4.0 shell environment. In other words, whenever you start a new terminal, you should run:
```
fe40
```
For more information on this topic, read section Using aliases to help manage multiple OpenFOAM versions in the page Installation/Working with the Shell.
Optionally, set environment variable for Qt to compile ParaView and add it to the respective preferences shell file:
- On bash (if unsure whether you are using bash, run "echo $SHELL"):
```
export QT_BIN_DIR=/path/to/qmake_directory
echo "export QT_BIN_DIR=$QT_BIN_DIR" >> etc/prefs.sh
```
  - Note: If you don't know what is /path/to/qmake, try checking what the following commands give you:
```
which qmake
which qmake-qt4
```
    For example, you might get the following answer:
```
/usr/bin/qmake-qt4
```
    from which the path /usr/bin/ should be used for replacing /path/to/qmake_directory, which means that you would run the following commands:
```
export QT_BIN_DIR=/usr/bin/
echo "export QT_BIN_DIR=$QT_BIN_DIR" >> etc/prefs.sh
```
- On csh:
```
setenv QT_BIN_DIR=/path/to/qmake
echo "setenv QT_BIN_DIR $QT_BIN_DIR" >> etc/prefs.csh
```
  - Note: If you don't know what is /path/to/qmake, try checking what the following commands give you:
```
which qmake
which qmake-qt4
```
    For example, you might get the following answer:
```
/usr/bin/qmake-qt4
```
    from which the path /usr/bin/ should be used for replacing /path/to/qmake_directory, which means that you would run the following commands:
```
setenv QT_BIN_DIR=/usr/bin/
echo "setenv QT_BIN_DIR $QT_BIN_DIR" >> etc/prefs.csh
```
Optionally, set environment variable for compiling Cuda solvers:
- On bash, for example (replace "sm_30" with value according to your GPU architecture):
```
export CUDA_ARCH=sm_30
echo "export CUDA_ARCH=sm_30" >> etc/prefs.sh
```
- On csh:
```
setenv CUDA_ARCH sm_30
echo "setenv CUDA_ARCH sm_30" >> etc/prefs.csh
```
Start compiling:
```
./Allwmake.firstInstall
```

1.3 Compile swak4foam

Swak4Foam is a set of utilities that are very handy when managing foam cases. In many cases it may not install properly the first time, when issuing

 Allwmake.firstInstall

, due to a dependency on Bison 2.7. If you get an error message from Stage 5:

 
swak4Foam only confirmed to work with Bison 2.x
Consider running ./maintainanceScripts/compileRequirements.sh for a local bison-installation
Set the environment variable DEVELOPE_FOR_NEW_BISON if you want to continue anyway.
 
Requirements for Library not satisfied. I see no sense in going on
Check the README before you go on to ask. And search: Most likely your problem occured to 5 other people before and has been solved on the MessageBoard

If you get this error message it may be best to get the current version of swak4foam, since Bison 2.7 is difficult to compile on a modern system:

 
cd ~/foam
 
hg clone http://hg.code.sf.net/p/openfoam-extend/swak4Foam openfoam-extend-swak4Foam
 
cd openfoam-extend-swak4Foam
 
./AllwmakeAll

The last command will also compile a local version of Bison and Lua, if you have Bison 3.4 or newer and Lua 5.2 or newer already on your system you can try to use those by issuing:

 
./Allwmake

but for compatibility I recommend the former.

1.4 Setup user directory

See section First steps.

2 First steps

After installing the foam-extend core, the first step should be to create the directory, where simulation cases will be held (this assumes that you have sourced etc/bashrc or etc/cshrc as described above):

mkdir -p $FOAM_RUN

When you have sourced etc/bashrc or etc/cshrc, you can use a shortcut to change to your run directory by typing:

run

You can now explore the tutorial cases, type:

tut

to change to the corresponding directory. To run a case, copy it to $FOAM_RUN and execute the solver application there.

The User Guide can be found inside the folder "doc/Guides-a4/". To know where this is located, run:

echo $WM_PROJECT_DIR/doc/Guides-a4

It can also be downloaded from here: UserGuide.pdf from foam-extend-4.0

For questions, please refer to the following forums:

For general questions: OpenFOAM forum at cfd-online.com
For specific installation questions: OpenFOAM Installation subforum at cfd-online.com

[1] ttp://sourceforge.net/p/foam-extend/foam-extend-4.0/ci/master/tree/ReleaseNotes.txt

[1]

Installation/Linux/foam-extend-4.0