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Installation

See also: Build Tiers · FAQ & Troubleshooting · CLI Overview · Programmer's Guide

1. Download and install milk

Info

This page describes installation of the core package milk. If you install an application package (cacao or coffee), replace "milk" with "cacao" in these instructions.

Install dependencies

"Package installation commands (quickstart)"

sudo apt-get install gcc cmake pkg-config libcfitsio-dev libreadline-dev libfftw3-dev libgsl-dev tmux

sudo yum install gcc cmake pkg-config cfitsio-devel readline-devel fftw3-devel gsl-devel tmux
Optional dependencies

Optional

Dependency CMake option Default Purpose
cfitsio USE_CFITSIO ON FITS file I/O (COREMOD_iofits)
readline USE_READLINE ON Interactive CLI line editing
GSL USE_GSL ON Numerical routines in plugins
fftw3 — auto FFT (used by some plugins)
openMP — auto Parallel processing

Somewhat optional:

Dependency Default Purpose
MKL (mkl-sdl) auto Intel linear algebra; takes priority over OpenBLAS if found
OpenBLAS auto Linear algebra (plugins); preferred over standalone LAPACKE
Lapacke auto Linear algebra
CUDA runtime Nvidia GPU computation
MAGMA runtime Linear algebra library over CUDA
tmux runtime Persistent shells for FPS compute units

lapacke is often provided by either MKL or OpenBLAS. If using neither, standalone lapacke is needed: apt install liblapacke-dev or yum install lapacke-devel.

Tip

For a minimal POSIX-only build, all optional dependencies can be skipped. See Build Tiers for details.

GPU acceleration (optional)

For GPU-accelerated linear algebra:

  • Install NVIDIA driver and CUDA toolkit
  • Install MAGMA

If cmake reports "No package 'magma' found", add the MAGMA pkg-config path to your shell profile:

~/.bashrc
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/magma/lib/pkgconfig

Clone: 

git clone --recursive https://github.com/milk-org/milk.git
cd milk

Build: 

mkdir _build && cd _build
cmake ..
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install # The default install path is /usr/local/milk-<version>

For minimal or partial builds (engine-only, core without cfitsio, etc.), see Build Tiers.

The sections below cover post-installation setup and optional configuration.

2. Environment variables

Set in .bashrc or equivalent:

Variable Example Purpose
MILK_ROOT /home/user/src/milk Source code directory
MILK_INSTALLDIR /usr/local/milk Installation directory
MILK_SHM_DIR /milk/shm Shared memory directory

MILK_INSTALLDIR

MILK_INSTALLDIR should point to the installation. Generally we set a symbolic link once and for all: 

sudo ln -sfn "/usr/local/milk-<version>" /usr/local/milk

3. tmpfs (optional but quite necessary to get performance)

Create a tmpfs disk for high-performance shared-memory I/O:

$ echo "tmpfs /milk/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
$ sudo mkdir -p /milk/shm
$ sudo mount /milk/shm

4. Further reading:

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