Checking out Mars

First you need to get Mars from the svn-repository. The default command will checkout it into a sub-directory called "directory" at the current directory. It will be created if not existing. If the argument is omitted, the default directory is Mars.

[0] svn checkout https://www.fact-project.org/svn/trunk/Mars [directory]
[1] cd Mars

Creating the build system

Now create a new sub-directory build (or with your preferred name) in your main source directory (here assuming the default name was used)

[2] mkdir build
[3] cd build

Before you run *cmake*, please make sure that your root environment has been properly initialized. With recent ROOT versions it is often enough if root-config is in your path. That is usually the case if you can execute root easily from your commandline (or root-config itself) or if export | grep ROOTSYS gives a reasonable result. Otherwise, call thisroot.sh from your root installation. Assuming root is installed in /opt/root-6.14.04, this would be:

[X] . /opt/root-6.14.04/bin/thisroot.sh

Be aware of the dot in front of the path! Note that switching from a newer to an older version in this way might fail (CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH will still point to the previous version).

Now call cmake from there (the ".." is intentional!)

[4] cmake ..

As a default, the project is compiled with the build type Release, thus all optimization is enabled and debug symbols are switched off. To enable debug symbols, you can use the build mode 'Debug' or 'RelWithDebInfo', e.g.

[4] cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..

As a default, cmake will try to find the compiler suite 'clang/clang++', 'gcc/g++' and 'cc/c++' (in this order). If you want to define a compiler yourself, then you can call cmake like this

[4] cmake -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-4.0 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++--4.0 ..

instead. If you are not sure which compiler to use, just use the default and see if it works. (In almost all cases using a different compiler is not worth it)

CMake will check for the availablility of all important packages. For Mars, this is mainly *root* and *libnova*. Although, we have managed to compile Mars with pre-installed binary packages, it is advised that you install root from scratch (see ​http://root.cern.ch). Libnova (if there is no package available -- don't forget the dev-package!) can be found here ​http://libnova.sourceforge.net/index.html and should be easy to compile (./configure && make.

If a package is missing, you will see an error which looks like this

Line
1	CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.10/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:137 (message):
2	Could NOT find Nova (missing: NOVA_LIBRARY NOVA_INCLUDE_DIR)
3	Call Stack (most recent call first):
4	/usr/share/cmake-3.10/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:378 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
5	cmake/FindNova.cmake:11 (FIND_PACKAGE_HANDLE_STANDARD_ARGS)
6	CMakeLists.txt:131 (FIND_PACKAGE)

It is a bit tricky to find out which package is missing at the moment. The important line is line #2

Could NOT find Nova (missing: NOVA_LIBRARY NOVA_INCLUDE_DIR)

In this case, it is the development package of the nova library (libnova-dev).

If you find something missing during compilation which is not checked, please let me know. As a good practice please attach the complete output of cmake and of make. To clean up your build tree and start from scratch simple remove the directory (rm -rf build) and start over with step [2].

Hint: To get an idea what cmake is doing or has done, you can call cmake-gui . in the build directory. Note that the . is required.

Usually, there is XXX_INCLUDE_DIR which is a a path to the header files and XXX_LIBRARY which is the library filename (including path).

To check what cmake actually found, you can call

[4] cmake-gui .

Compiling Mars

Then call

[5] make -jN

where N is the numbers of threads you want to utilize (check the number of CPU cores you can keep busy). Or you can omit the -jN in case you want to run on a single CPU.

Starting Mars

On success, by starting root in your build directory, you should see a message like

[0] root -l

Loading 'libmars.so'... done.

Welcome to the Mars Root environment.

root [0] 

Be aware that it might be slightly different for different versions (in particular of root).

You should now be able to use Mars.

How does that work? When you start root in your build directory, it reads .rootrc in your build directory. This file points to rootlogon.C in your build directory. This macro is executed when on root startup and loads the shared object lib/libmars.so. As all this uses absoluet paths, you could even move .rootrc into your home directory and get the Mars environment no matter where you start root. As this works only with absolute paths, you might not change or rename the build directory without changing those files.

Tipp

Lately, on modern screens, the default GUI fonts of root (10 and 12) are exceptionally small. They can be changed by adding the following lines to your .rootrc. As root is always using the one in your home directory additonally, it is advisable to add these lines to your global .rootrc.

Gui.DefaultFont:            -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.MenuFont:               -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.MenuHiFont:             -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.DocFixedFont:           -*-courier-*-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.DocPropFont:            -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.IconFont:               -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
Gui.StatusFont:             -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

Known to work

• cmake 3.5.0 / 3.5.1 / 3.10.2
• Scientific Linux 6.10 and gcc 4.4.7
• Ubuntu 16.04 and clang 3.8 / 4 .0 / 5.0 / 6.0 or gcc 5.4.0
• Ubuntu 18.04 and clang 6.0 or gcc 7.3.0
• root 5.34/36, 5.34/38, 6.12/06, 6.14/04
• libnova 0.12 / 0.15.0

Not all combinations might work though. And not all combinations might always be up-to-date in the repository as they can not always be tested. Please report if you find a problem with them so that it can be fixed.