[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Adding FEniCS to repository

[Johannes Ring]

On Fri, October 17, 2008 10:33, Ondrej Certik wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Johannes Ring <johannr at simula.no> wrote:
>> Hi Ondrej,
>>
>> On Fri, October 17, 2008 10:11, Ondrej Certik wrote:
>>>> SyFi:
>>>> Description: finite element engine based on symbolic mathematics
>>>>  The finite element method (FEM) package SyFi is a C++ library built
>>>> on
>>>> top of
>>>>  the symbolic math library GiNaC. The name SyFi stands for Symbolic
>>>> Finite
>>>>  Elements. The package provides polygonal domains, polynomial spaces,
>>>> and
>>>>  degrees of freedom as symbolic expressions that are easily
>>>> manipulated.
>>>> This
>>>>  makes it easy to define finite elements and variational forms. These
>>>> elements
>>>>  and forms are then used to generate efficient C++ code.
>>>>  .
>>>>  SyFi is similar to FFC in the sense that it has a compiler that
>>>> generates
>>>> UFC
>>>>  code based on variational forms and finite elements. It is also
>>>> similar
>>>> to
>>>>  FIAT in the sense that it implements many different finite elements.
>>>
>>> Indeed, great contribution. I was trying to compile SyFi from source
>>> and it failed,
>>
>> I just recently changed the build-system in SyFi to a SCons based
>> build-system. Did you use this build-system when it failed or the old
>> autotools system?
>
> I used the old autoconf system. I didn't have time to investigate, so
> it was probably something trivial.

Ok, hopefully this is fixed in the new build-system.

> I can see here:
>
> http://www.fenics.org:8010/syfi/
>
> that it should build.
>
>>
>>> so I am looking forward for your package that I'll just
>>> apt-get install.
>>
>> Yes, if you are in no real hurry to try out SyFi, you can just wait for
>> the deb-packages.
>
> Yes, I'll do that. I also just subscribed to the syfi mailinglist, as
> I am also using FEM and also we are developing sympy, so I am
> interested in collaboration.

Sounds good.

BTW. The debian/* files for SyFi is probably the ones that requires most
work. Now it is just one package, syfi, that includes libraries, header
files, binaries, Python files and wrappers, and documentation. I guess I
should split this package into packages like libsyfi, libsyfi-dev,
syfi-bin, python-syfi, and syfi-doc. Also, to use SyFi from Python, one
should install Swiginac [1] as well. AFAIK Swiginac is not available in
Debian, however, I have created a package for it at my Ubuntu repository
[2] and I therefore have the files ready. Is Swiginac something that we
want to include into Debian? If so, I can add the files to the repository.

[1] http://swiginac.berlios.de/
[2] http://packages.simula.no

Johannes