[ASCEND] Ascend GSOC 2016 - Setting up Ascend, some links

[<mar...@di...>]

Hi there,
I set up Ascend under Ubuntu, gnewsense (http://gnewsense.org/) and 
Raspbian. I'm trying to give you a general installation process for 
Ascend in the following lines...when the installation doesn't work for 
you then please read the output in the terminal and try to find out 
which packages are missing or what the problem is. This link is of 
course also very important: http://ascend4.org/Building_ASCEND

Make sure you have the following packages installed:

TERMINAL:
sudo apt-get install subversion gcc g++ gfortran flex bison scons swig 
doxygen
sudo apt-get install tcl tcl-dev tk tk-dev tk-table graphviz 
graphviz-dev
sudo apt-get install python2.7 libgtk2.0-0 python-gtk2 python-matplotlib 
python-numpy ipython
sudo apt-get install python-dev libsundials-serial-dev
sudo apt-get install liblapack-dev libblas-dev coinor-libipopt-dev
sudo apt-get install libcunit1-dev libmumps-seq-dev lyx

Then try to install via the subversion repository:

TERMINAL (location home/USERNAME/):
svn co http://svn.ascend4.org/trunk ascend

scons $WITH_GRAPHVIZ = /usr/lib/graphviz WITH_DOC=0

scons install

I installed Ascend without the documentation system because I received 
the following message:

"lyx too old. Install from sources. libqt4-core and libqt4-dev needed.
Error output when trying to install ascend:
LyX: Done!
Warning: 474: Format not supported.
Warning: Quiting.
Error: Conversion script failed"
----------------------------------------
~/ascend/doc/book.lyx is from a different version of LyX, but the 
lyx2lyx script failed to convert it.
scons: *** [doc/book.tex] Error 1
scons: building terminated because of errors.

This could be a task for bug squashing or improving the installation 
process. To make ascend work with lyx again (this of course also depends 
on the linux distribution you're using and what version of lyx gets 
installed with your distribution. I had the problem with a raspbian 
distribution last year. Is it still the case that lyx is too old when 
you try to install it without turning the documentation off? (neglect 
WITH_DOC=0))

Packaging ascend for Debian would also be nice in my opinion.

For other tasks also check out what has be done last year for GSOC2015:
https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/ascend

Adrian has for example worked on the GTK+3 support: 
https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/gsoc2015/dragon7/5724160613416960

To get a hang of FPROPS check out the code repository: 
http://code.ascend4.org/ascend/trunk/models/johnpye/fprops/
and try to understand it...takes some time to digest and the theory how 
the thermodynamic properties are calculated is also quite a steep 
learning curve (don't give up!). Try to figure out how FPROPS is 
structured and how the data is stored in the fluids folder and how the 
data is accessed.

Regarding the GSOC2016 application: I followed GSOC2015 and was quite 
amazed of the quality of the applications. If you are very serious about 
applying for the ascend project then try finding a task as soon as 
possible and start working on it. Also start with writing down your 
task, the theory, the step stones, some code examples you have been 
working on for it and put it all in one document. Make it look like a 
paper and prove you're applying a scientific approach to your task.
Also ask yourself if you really have time for it since you receive money 
and the workload can be quite much if you're a newbie to programming 
with C/Python/GTK+ and/or Ascend. As I can speak of myself: Working with 
Ascend is very rewarding. You learn in depth how a application for 
chemical engineering can look like and works.

I'm only a contributor to Ascend so please don't take this email as an 
official or as a cast in stone statement.

Cheers,
mark