install from ppa on vtk6 system

Question

Dear everyone,

When trying to install fenics from the ppa (running Kubuntu 14.04), I am getting an error for unmet dependencies: it seems to require vtk5, but I need vtk6 for other applications. Is there a build available that will work with vtk6? Is there a way to force the installation? Do I have to build fenics from source? Thanks for helping.

Martin

EDIT: For now I simply downloaded all fenics packages from the ppa using sudo apt-get download libdolfin-dev python-dolfin dolfin-doc dolfin-bin libmshr-dev python-mshr mshr-demos, then I installed them using sudo dpkg -i *.deb, then in /var/lib/dpkg/status I changed the dependencies from libvtk5-dev to libvtk6-dev, then I finished the installation with sudo apt-get -f install. I had to make some sym links using for i in /usr/lib/libvtk*.so.5.8; do sudo ln -s $i ${i/.5.8/}; done and sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libQVTK.so.5.8 /usr/lib/libQVTK.so. I don't think it's really recommended to do that, but for now it seems to work fine.

EDIT: This workaround has some issue (see http://fenicsproject.org/qa/9320/import-both-vtk-and-dolfin), so the best is definitely to build a custom fenics.

johannr · Answer 1 · Feb 2, 2016

Best answer

No, you have to rebuild DOLFIN with VTK 6, so it will not help to force the installation. Building from source is probably the way to go.

answered Feb 2, 2016 by johannr FEniCS Expert (17,350 points)
selected Feb 17, 2016 by Martin Genet

Thanks! What would be the procedure to build DOLFIN alongside VTK6? Do I have to create a specific HashDist rule, or can I use my systems's vtk? Any hint would be highly appreciated. Thanks again!

commented Feb 16, 2016 by Martin Genet FEniCS User (1,460 points)

For the record, Johannes explained on the mailing list that in order to use the system's vtk, it's as easy as writing

vtk:
    use: host-vtk

in the hashdist profile. Thanks Johannes!

commented Feb 17, 2016 by Martin Genet FEniCS User (1,460 points)

install from ppa on vtk6 system

1 Answer