1. Guidance for Installation

1.1. Installation Guide for RMC

Similar to many scientific computing programs, RMC is a console program without a graphical user interface (GUI). The core of the program is a binary executable file that can be run or controlled in a command-line window or terminal in text mode.

RMC executable file is generated by compiling the source code, and the compilation process can be referred to in the compilation documentation (not currently available for the personal edition). Currently, RMC is divided into a personal edition and an enterprise edition. For the enterprise edition, we will provide installation services according to the contract requirements. For the installation of the personal edition, please refer to the following documentation.

1.2. Installation of Personal Edition

1.2.1. Installation using Anaconda

Note:

#. This method is suitable for 64-bit Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems; #. This method has been tested on Windows 10, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, MacOS 10.15, and OpenSUSE 15.3. If you encounter any issues on other systems, please feel free to provide feedback; #. The Anaconda version used in this method is based on Python 3.7, specifically Anaconda3 5.3.1 or miniconda3 3.7.3.

1.2.1.1. Installing Anaconda Environment

The download links for Anaconda/miniconda are as follows:

After downloading, Windows users can double-click the installer and follow the instructions. For Linux or MacOS users, the installation can be done via the terminal using bash:

bash ./Anaconda3-5.3.1-Linux-x86_64.sh

Then follow the prompts to complete the installation. If you encounter any issues with installing Anaconda3, you can search online for specific tutorials.

Note: If you wish for more convenient usage in the future, you can add Anaconda to the path environment variable on Windows or to the PATH environment variable on Linux/MacOS.

1.2.1.2. Creating Virtual Environments

One of the most important uses of Anaconda is to create virtual environments, which allows for isolation of environment configurations. It is strongly recommended to create a virtual environment! This can help avoid conflicts with other software and ensure that the dependencies required by RMC are properly managed. The following instructions will guide you through creating a virtual environment for RMC.

Opening the Anaconda Terminal

  • Anaconda Prompt on Windows

  • CMD and PowerShell with path added

  • Linux/MacOS terminal with PATH added

Switch to the folder where you want to store this virtual environment and execute the commands to create and activate the virtual environment. For example, if you want to create a virtual environment named venv in the current folder, you can run the following commands:

cd folder_you_like
conda create -p ./venv python=3.7  # "/" may need to be changed to "\" on some Windows systems
conda activate ./venv  # "/" may need to be changed to "\" on some Windows systems

1.2.1.3. Installing RMC

Using the following command to install RMC 3.5

conda install -c thu_real rmc

If the installation fails, it is usually a channel issue. It is recommended to add conda-forge and then try the above command again, as follows:

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda install -c thu_real rmc

1.2.1.4. Using RMC

After completing the above installation, run the following command in the terminal without closing it:

RMC --version

The version information can be printed out, indicating a successful installation. Subsequently, prepare the following files in the calculation directory to proceed with the computation:

  • Input card file (assuming the main input card file is named inp,

    currently RMC supports include functionality, so the input card may consist of multiple files)

  • Database index file xsdir, if other features are enabled, additional

    index files like xsdir_sab may be required

  • Burnup-related files DepthMainLib (required for burnup calculations)

    Calculation commands are as follows:

# Note that there is no need to add "./" before RMC
RMC inp  # Serial calculation
RMC -s 2 inp  # OpenMP parallel calculation, 2 threads in parallel
mpirun -n 2 <path to RMC> inp  # Replace <path to RMC> with the actual path to RMC, which is in the bin folder under the venv virtual environment, MPI parallel calculation, 2 processes in parallel
mpirun -n 2 <path to RMC> -s 2 inp  # MPI parallel calculation, 2 processes * 2 threads in parallel

To use RMC again in the future, simply open the Anaconda terminal (see above for details), activate the virtual environment created earlier, and then you can use RMC. For example, if the virtual environment is named venv and located in the current folder, you can run the following command:

conda activate <path to venv>  # <path to venv> should be replaced with the path to the virtual environment, note that on Linux/MacOS, relative paths need to start with "./"

1.2.2. The old installation method

In the past installation guide, you can copy the RMC executable file to a suitable directory and run it directly , without installation. For the personal version, specific installation methods will be provided later.

Note that, depending on the compilation system and configuration, the executable file has multiple versions, including:

  • Operating system: Windows / Linux / Mac OS

  • System bitness: 32-bit / 64-bit

  • Compilation options: Debug / Release

  • Parallelization: Serial version / MPI parallel version

    (including different MPI library versions, such as MPICH, OpenMPI, etc.)

Suitable versions of the executable file should be selected based on the system and configuration, and the way to run the program is the same as the calculation commands mentioned above.