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FAQ

Q.1) Why did you do this?
Q.2) Why did you use C instead of Fortran90?
Q.3) Can AcouSTO handle moving surfaces or moving sources?
Q.4) Can AcouSTO include atmospheric absorption?
Q.5) I cannot configure AcouSTO, I run the configure script but it doesn't recognise my ScaLAPACK, LAPACK,... libraries.
Q.6) I get an "undefined symbol" error for functions restFP/saveFP when compiling on my Mac OSX.
Q.7) Why did you use SCALAPACK for the parallel solution of the linear system
Q.8) I get a compilation error for "wrong number of arguments" in the config routines calls.


A.1) Uhm, actually we don't know, probably just to enjoy the long dinners and the good wine we had while working together in our spare time.

A.2) The reason is that the level of maturity and reliability of the freely available C compilers (read gcc) is far beyond the one reached so far by the Fortran versions. In addition, the number and the quality of the development tools available to C programmers is much higher. We know that Fortran is widely used in the engineering community, but after long discussions we finally decided for C.

A.3) No, not yet.

A.4) No, sorry.

A.5) The AcouSTO configure scripts expects to find the netlib libraries with the following names:
  • libblas.a
  • liblapack.a
  • libscalapack.a
  • libblacs.a or libmpiblacs.a or libblacs_MPI.a
  • libblacsCinit.a or libblacsC.a or libmpiblacsCinit.a or libbblacsCinit_MPI.a
Please check the manual or the Install section of the web site.

A.6) The problem is well known. Apple moved some floating point functions away from the standard gcc libraries causing many problems to whoever is using Mac OSX to compile number crunching codes. The solution is linking with the static version of libgcc (libgcc.a) that can be found somewhere in the system. AcouSTO configure script tries to link against the correct static library but, in case it fails, you can try to locate the library and modify the link command on your own. You can find additional details in the Users'Guide. Don't blame it on us, blame it on Steve Jobs.

A.7) This question is closely related to the previous one. Indeed, the restFP/saveFP problem appears whenever you try to link together binaries compiled with C and Fortran. The reason for our choice is related to the lack of robust MPI-based scientific libraries written in C. We did some experiment with the very promising PETSC package, but we have experienced installation problems, and some unclear behavior when dealing with dense complex matrices. We are still continuing the tests, and a PETSC-based version of the code could be released in the future.

A.8) You are probably using a libconfig >= 1.3.2. In order to compile AcouSTO you must define the flag HAVE_LIBCONFIG_1_3_2 by issuing the command "export CFLAGS=-DHAVE_LIBCONFIG_1_3_2" in bash, or "setenv CFLAGS -DHAVE_LIBCONFIG_1_3_2" in csh or tcsh.