This page explains how to build from source:

This source can be retrieved in two forms:

Note that if you use the SVN version, you will need to install more tools (see below).

The first section of this page gives general instructions, which apply to all platforms. Then some specific platforms are discussed.

Contents

  1. General instructions
  2. Debian or Ubuntu
  3. Windows 32-bit, using MinGW
  4. Windows 32-bit, using Cygwin
  5. Windows 64-bit
  6. Mac OS X 10.6

/!\ Here, when we refer to 32-bit or 64-bit, we refer to the type of MATLAB installation, not the type of Windows installation. It is perfectly possible to run a 32-bit MATLAB on a 64-bit Windows: in that case, instructions for Windows 32-bit should be followed. To determine the type of your MATLAB installation, type: 

>> computer

at the MATLAB prompt: if it returns PCWIN, then you have a 32-bit MATLAB; if it returns PCWIN64, then you have a 64-bit MATLAB.

For Windows users, there is no pareto-optimum between MinGW and Cygwin, it depends on what you want to do:

1. General instructions

1.1. Prerequisites

A number of tools and libraries are needed in order to recompile everything. You don't necessarily need to install everything, depending on what you want to compile.

1.2. Preparing the sources

If you have downloaded the sources from an official source archive or the snapshot, just unpack it.

/!\ If you are using the snapshot, since it contains a build tree for Windows, you first need to clean it with: 

make clean

If you want to use SVN, do the following from a terminal: 

svn checkout https://www.dynare.org/svn/dynare/trunk dynare
cd dynare
autoreconf -s -i

The last line runs Autoconf and Automake in order to prepare the build environment (this is not necessary if you got the sources from an official source archive or the snapshot).

1.3. Configuring the build tree

You just launch the configure script from a terminal: 

./configure

If you have MATLAB, you need to indicate both MATLAB location and MATLAB version. For example, on Linux: 

./configure --with-matlab=/usr/local/matlab78 MATLAB_VERSION=7.8

Note that MATLAB version can also specified via the MATLAB family product release (R2009a, R2008b, ...).

/!\ On MATLAB versions strictly older than 7.1, you need to explicitly give the MEX extension, via MEXEXT variable of the configure script (for example, MEXEXT=dll for Windows with MATLAB < 7.1).

Alternatively, you can disable the compilation of MEX files for MATLAB with the --disable-matlab flag, and MEX files for Octave with --disable-octave.

You may need to specify additional options to the configure script, see the platform specific instructions below.

Note that if you don't want to compile with debugging information, you can specify the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables to configure, such as: 

./configure CFLAGS="-O3" CXXFLAGS="-O3"

If the configuration goes well, the script will tell you which components are correctly configured and will be built.

1.4. Building

Binaries are built with: 

make

PDF and HTML documentation are respectively built with: 

make pdf
make html

The testsuites can be run with: 

make check

2. Debian or Ubuntu

All the prerequisites are packaged. If you want to build everything, install the following packages:

3. Windows 32-bit, using MinGW

The easiest way to setup a build environment for MinGW is to install the Octave MinGW installer. Pick the latest version in the 3.2.x series (3.2.3 at the time of this writing), and install it on your machine.

Installing MinGW this way has the following advantages:

In the remaining of this section it is assumed that you installed Octave this way, in c:/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/. It is probably possible to compile Dynare without this Octave/MinGW bundle, but we won't document it here.

/!\ The 3.2.3 version of the Octave installer does not have Pthreads-win32 (POSIX threads for Windows), but the configure script will think it has it; fix it by renaming c:/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/mingw32/mingw32/lib/libpthread.a to something else.

First, from the Windows Explorer, run the MSYS.bat script located in c:/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/MSYS/. This should open a terminal window.

Second, download Dynare sources from the website (either the snapshot or the official sources when Dynare 4.1 is released). Using SVN is not recommended with MinGW, since you will not have all the necessary tools to rebuild some sources. Uncompress Dynare sources in your MinGW home. This directory is located in c:/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/MSYS/home/user (where user is your login name).

Third, download Boost sources (from http://www.boost.org) and uncompress them in your home. Let's say they are located in c:/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/MSYS/home/user/boost_1_40_0

Then, from the terminal, go to the directory containing Dynare sources (using the cd command).

If you got the sources with the snapshot, clean the build tree: 

make clean

Then you need to adjust the path to include MinGW executables and Octave libraries: 

export PATH=$PATH:/c/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/mingw32/bin:/c/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/bin

Then configure the package.

If you don't have MATLAB: 

./configure CC=mingw32-gcc-4.4.0-dw2 CXX=mingw32-g++-4.4.0-dw2 F77=mingw32-gfortran-4.4.0-dw2 CPPFLAGS="-I/home/user/boost_1_40_0" LDFLAGS="-L/c/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/lib"

Here it is necessary to give the full name of C, C++ and Fortran 77 compilers, since they use non-standard names.

If you have MATLAB, let's say version R2009a installed in c:/Program Files/MATLAB/R2009a, do: 

./configure --with-matlab=/c/Progra~1/MATLAB/R2009a MATLAB_VERSION=R2009a CC=mingw32-gcc-4.4.0-dw2 CXX=mingw32-g++-4.4.0-dw2 F77=mingw32-gfortran-4.4.0-dw2 CPPFLAGS="-I/home/user/boost_1_40_0" LDFLAGS="-L/c/Octave/3.2.3_gcc4.4.0/lib"

/!\ Note that here we use Progra~1 (the 8.3 filename) instead of Program Files. This is because spaces in filenames confuse the configuration scripts.

/!\ On MATLAB < 7.1, you need to explicitly give the MEX extension, with MEXEXT=dll

/!\ On MATLAB >= 7.1, if your MATLAB is 32-bit and your Windows is 64-bit, you need to explicitly give the MEX extension, with MEXEXT=mexw32

Then compile Dynare and Dynare++ with: 

make

4. Windows 32-bit, using Cygwin

First, you need to setup a Cygwin environment, following the instructions at http://www.cygwin.com.

Then, install the following packages:

/!\ If you want to use the graphics capabilities of Octave, note that you must also install an X11 server.

Note that package for Octave 3.0.3 has a little packaging bug, which you need to fix by typing the following at Cygwin prompt: 

mv /usr/lib/octave-3.0.3/libctave.dll.a /usr/lib/octave-3.0.3/liboctave.dll.a

The version of Boost included with Cygwin is too old. You need to download a more recent version (1.40 at the time of this writing), on http://www.boost.org.

Then uncompress the Boost sources somewhere, let's say in /home/user: 

tar xvjf boost_1_40_0.tar.bz2

Note that you don't need to compile any Boost libraries; Dynare only make use of the headers.

Also note that dblatex, Econometrica biliographic style and eplain are not packaged in Cygwin: you need to install them manually if you want to build the corresponding documentation.

Now, go to the Dynare source tree from a Cygwin shell.

If you retrieved the source from SVN, don't forget to do: 

autoreconf -i -s

Then, configure the package.

If you don't have MATLAB, do: 

./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/home/user/boost_1_40_0"

If you have MATLAB, let's say version R2009a installed in c:/Program Files/MATLAB/R2009a, do: 

./configure --with-matlab=/cygdrive/c/Progra~1/MATLAB/R2009a MATLAB_VERSION=R2009a CPPFLAGS="-I/home/user/boost_1_40_0"

/!\ Note that here we use Progra~1 (the 8.3 filename) instead of Program Files. This is because spaces in filenames confuse the configuration scripts.

/!\ On MATLAB < 7.1, you need to explicitly give the MEX extension, with MEXEXT=dll

/!\ On MATLAB >= 7.1, if your MATLAB is 32-bit and your Windows is 64-bit, you need to explicitly give the MEX extension, with MEXEXT=mexw32

Then compile everything with: 

make
make pdf
make html

This should build:

/!\ In order to be able to run Dynare from MATLAB, you need to tell MATLAB where to find the Cygwin DLL. More precisely, you need to add c:\cygwin\bin to your execution path, otherwise Dynare will fail to run the preprocessor. There are two ways of doing it: 

>> setenv('PATH', [ getenv('PATH') ';c:\cygwin\bin' ])

5. Windows 64-bit

Compiling the preprocessor, the MEX files for Octave and the documentation are done the same way as you would for Windows 32-bit (a 32-bit preprocessor binary is fine, and Octave distributions are all 32-bit at this time). Follow the instructions for Cygwin or MinGW (whichever you prefer), without specifying MATLAB to the configure script, i.e. using the --disable-matlab flag.

Then you need to compile the MEX files for MATLAB, which must be 64-bit. There exists a MinGW for 64-bit platforms, but at this time it is unfortunately unable to link with MATLAB libraries. So the solution is to use Microsoft Visual Studio C++ (freely available).

For the installation, please follow the instructions given on Mathworks FAQ.

Then compile the MEX files by launching the script build_matlab.m available in mex/sources subdirectory of Dynare installation.

6. Mac OS X 10.6

You do not need to install BLAS, LAPACK, xsltproc or the GNU Compilers as these come standard with OS X. Further, after installing XCode, you will not need to install Bison, Flex, Autoconf and Automake.

To build Dynare on Mac OS X, follow the General Instructions above, modified as described herein. NB: Install XCode first. 

CFLAGS="-arch i386 ${CFLAGS}"
FFLAGS="-arch i386 ${FFLAGS}"
CPPFLAGS="-arch i386 ${CPPFLAGS}"
CXXFLAGS="-arch i386 ${CXXFLAGS}"
LDFLAGS="-arch i386 ${LDFLAGS}"

If you're using GCC4.5 as opposed to the default OS X version of GCC4.2.1, replace -arch i386 above with -m32. 

sudo chown -R root:wheel *

If building dynare++, call the configure script with the linker option CFLAGS='-arch i386' CXXFLAGS='-arch i386' LDFLAGS='-arch i386 -framework Accelerate' to link to the BLAS and LAPACK libraries.