AFLOW Installation and Source Code

Preparing the AFLOW Installation

MacOS

AFLOW requires xcode to compile. xcode can be installed from the App Store.

Windows

AFLOW does not run natively on Windows. However, it is possible to run AFLOW on a Windows machine using emulators.

Ubuntu/Debian for Windows (Windows 10)

  1. Open Windows PowerShell with Administrator rights (right-click → Run as administrator).
  2. Execute the command Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux.
  3. Restart the computer.
  4. Install Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or Debian from the Microsoft Store and launch it. Follow the instructions to finish the setup.

Cygwin (Windows 7/8/8.1)

  1. Download Cygwin.
  2. Run the installer until you get to "Select Your Internet Connection" and choose "Direct Connection". On the next screen, choose any server to continue.
  3. Continue until you reach the "Select Packages" screen. Select the package wget. You also need to select a text editor such as vim, emacs, or nano.
  4. Click "Next" to install.

Installing AFLOW

Installing AFLOW is fully automated and should not require user intervention besides entering passwords and answering prompts. Please read this entire section carefully before running the installation script.

Running the Installation Script

  1. Open a terminal (Linux, Mac), Ubuntu or Debian for Windows (Windows 10), or Cygwin (other Windows).
  2. Run the command wget http://aflow.org/install-aflow/install-aflow.sh or curl http://aflow.org/install-aflow/install-aflow.sh -o install-aflow.sh (Mac) to download the installation script.
  3. Make the script executable with chmod 555 install-aflow.sh.
  4. Use ./install-aflow.sh to start the installation.
  5. Follow the prompts on the screen if necessary. You may be asked for your password and/or confirm the installation of additional packages.

Note that some packages required for plotting (such as texlive) are very large. To install AFLOW without plotting capabilities, run ./install-aflow.sh --slim.

The AFLOW binaries will be installed into ~/bin and the AFLOW source code will be downloaded and stored into ~/src/AFLOW. If ~/src/AFLOW already exists, it will be overwritten in the process. See Customizing the AFLOW Installation to change these locations.

Linux users: Root privileges are required if packages are missing. The installation script was tested on Debian, *Ubuntu, Arch, and Fedora. It will not run on other Linux flavors. For the other flavors, AFLOW will need to be compiled from source.

Mac users: If a required package is not found, the script will use homebrew to install them. If homebrew is not present, it will try to install it first.

Windows 10 users: There will be multiple prompts about installing packages and restarting services. They can all be answered with yes. After installing the required packages, you may be asked to enter your password again.

Installing Python Packages

The script can install a python3 virtual environment into ~/virtualenv along with all AFLOW python modules. To do this, run ./install-aflow.sh --venv (can be combined with --slim). See Customizing the AFLOW Installation to change the location of the virtual environment or to use an already existing one.

If you do not wish to use a virtual environment at all, run the script without --venv and use the file aflow_python_packages.txt to install the missing prerequisites. This file can also be generated by calling install-aflow.sh --pip_modules. Then, run aflow --python_modules -D modules_path where modules_path is the path in which the modules are installed. To make the modules globally available, modules_path should point to the site-packages or dist-packages directory.

Cygwin users: The script will not install a virtual Python environment because of issues with compiling jupyter. However, --venv can still be used to install the Python modules. The installation of numpy may require a restart of the Cygwin terminal.

Customizing the AFLOW Installation

The following parameters can be customized:

  • The AFLOW source code location can be changed by adding --compile_dir=desired_path to the install-aflow.sh command. Default is ~/src/AFLOW/. Note that this directory will be completely overwritten upon installation.
  • The AFLOW binary location can be changed by adding --install_dir=desired_path to the install-aflow.sh command. Default is ~/bin/.
  • The location of the Python virtual environment can be changed by adding --venv=desired_path to the install-aflow.sh command. Default is ~/virtualenv. If a virtual environment is already present in that path, the existing environment will be used instead.

Upgrading AFLOW to the Newest Version

To upgrade AFLOW, simply run xaflow. It will automatically download and compile the newest version. The parameter install_dir should be the same as for the initial installation.

AFLOW Source Code

AFLOW can also be compiled from source. A helper script to download and compile the newest version is also available. To use it:

  • Download xaflow.
  • Make the script executable using chmod 555 xaflow.
  • Run xaflow. This will download AFLOW into ~/src/AFLOW/. To change the location, run xaflow AWD=PATH where PATH is the path to the desired source code location. Note that this will overwrite the directory.
  • Run xaflow install. This will install the aflow binaries into ~/bin/. To change the location, run xaflow install ULB=PATH where PATH is the path to the desired binary location.

Older versions of AFLOW can be found at materials.duke.edu/AFLOW/.