Advanced Installation

Advanced users, especially those who want to contribute to the development of pairinteraction, can build the software from source. The source code is available on GitHub and can be cloned from the pairinteraction repository using the following git command:

git clone --single-branch https://github.com/pairinteraction/pairinteraction.git

The --single-branch flag is not essential but will speed up the download significantly by omitting all other branches except master.

For building from source we offer two different setups:

Build using pip - This build method builds the C++ backend automatically, while allowing to build the python dependencies manually. Recommended for adjusting only the python code.

Build using cmake - This build method allows to manually build both the C++ and the python backend. It allows to compile specific parts of the code only, define test targets, and others. Recommend for adjusting both the C++ and the python code.

As building from source depends on your operating system, you will need to prepare different tools for your development environment, including a python package manager.

You will find detailed instructions about how to set up your development environment here:

Python Setup - Get instructions on different python package management systems, and how to setup a virtual environment for development

Setup of the Development Environment - Get instructions on the tooling chain to build the C++ backend via the automatic or manual build.

Building from source allows also to build only the documentation. This is especially useful if you only want to document some changes you contributed to the python interface. You can also find detailed information about building the documentation on the respective subpage.