Users

Our community is here to help. Please report installation problems in case you should get stuck.

Choose one of the installation methods below to get started:

HPC Systems

If want to use WarpX on a specific high-performance computing (HPC) systems, jump directly to our HPC system-specific documentation.

Using the Conda-Forge Package

A package for WarpX is available via Conda-Forge.

Tip

We recommend to deactivate that conda self-activates its base environment. This avoids interference with the system and other package managers.

conda config --set auto_activate_base false

In order to make sure that the conda configuration uses conda-forge as the only channel, which will help avoid issues with blocked defaults or anaconda repositories, please set the following configurations:

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority strict

mamba create -n warpx -c conda-forge warpx
mamba activate warpx

Note

The warpx package on conda-forge does not yet provide GPU support.

Using the Spack Package

Packages for WarpX are available via the Spack package manager. The package warpx installs executables and the variant warpx +python also includes Python bindings, i.e. PICMI.

# optional: activate Spack binary caches
spack mirror add rolling https://binaries.spack.io/develop
spack buildcache keys --install --trust

# see `spack info py-warpx` for build options.
# optional arguments:       -mpi compute=cuda
spack install warpx +python
spack load warpx +python

See spack info warpx and the official Spack tutorial for more information.

Using the PyPI Package

Given that you have the WarpX dependencies installed, you can use pip to install WarpX with PICMI from source:

python3 -m pip install -U pip
python3 -m pip install -U build packaging setuptools[core] wheel
python3 -m pip install -U cmake

python3 -m pip wheel -v git+https://github.com/BLAST-WarpX/warpx.git
python3 -m pip install *whl

In the future, will publish pre-compiled binary packages on PyPI for faster installs. (Consider using conda in the meantime.)

Using the Brew Package

Note

Coming soon.

From Source with CMake

After installing the WarpX dependencies, you can also install WarpX from source with CMake:

# get the source code
git clone https://github.com/BLAST-WarpX/warpx.git $HOME/src/warpx
cd $HOME/src/warpx

# configure
cmake -S . -B build

# optional: change configuration
ccmake build

# compile
#   on Windows:          --config RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build build -j 4

# executables for WarpX are now in build/bin/

We document the details in the developer installation.

Tips for macOS Users

Tip

Before getting started with package managers, please check what you manually installed in /usr/local. If you find entries in bin/, lib/ et al. that look like you manually installed MPI, HDF5 or other software in the past, then remove those files first.

If you find software such as MPI in the same directories that are shown as symbolic links then it is likely you brew installed software before. If you are trying annother package manager than brew, run brew unlink … on such packages first to avoid software incompatibilities.