2.2. Local Installation

If you run on one of the supported distributions

• Enterprise Linux 7 or CentOS 7 (el7)

• Enterprise Linux 8 or CentOS 8 (el8)

• Ubuntu 18.04 (ubuntu1804)

• Ubuntu 20.04 (ubuntu2004)

the installation uses precompiled binaries and is rather quick. Otherwise the code has to be compiled from source which takes a lot of time.

Hint

To find which distribution you are running on you can use lsb_release -a.

After you installing the Belle II Software Tools you need only to download the software and corresponding externals version.

2.2.1. Downloading the Software Release

We can obtain a list of available releases by just calling

$ b2install-release

This will give you a list of all release versions available for download. If you don’t know which version to use just take the one with the highest number starting with release-. You can then download this release by calling

$ b2install-release <version> [<system>]

where <version> should be the version you want. The operating system is automatically determined, but you can override this by giving the system argument which should be the short distribution name for the desired system from the list of supported distributions in the table above. For example, to download release-01-00-00 on an Ubuntu 16.04 machine you need to run

$ b2install-release release-01-00-00 ubuntu1604

Warning

If you work on a system for which we do not provide precompiled binaries the b2install-release command will compile the release from source. This requires that the externals are already installed, see next section.

2.2.2. Downloading the Externals Software

After downloading the software itself you will also need to download the corresponding externals package which contains all external software required by the Software. The easiest way to find out which externals version you need is by trying to setup the software version you just downloaded. For example

$ b2setup release-01-00-00

should print an error like

The externals version v01-05-02 does not exist. You can use ‘b2install-externals’ to install them.

which tells us that we need externals version v01-05-02 by calling

$ b2install-externals v01-05-02 [<system>]

system is again optional and can be the short distribution name for the desired system from the list of supported distributions. For example, to download externals v01-05-02 on an Ubuntu 16.04 machine you need to run

$ b2install-externals v01-05-02 ubuntu1604

Now everything should be installed and you can setup the software using

$ b2setup release-01-00-00

(or any other version you installed).

Warning

If you work on a system for which we do not provide precompiled binaries the b2install-externals command will compile the externals from source. This can take an hour or more. In case of problems try to find a solution at the troubleshooting guide or at questions.

2.2.3. Validation of the Installation

A quick test to check whether everythings was installed correctly is to execute

$ basf2 --info

and to list the available modules with

$ basf2 -m