The installation steps differs with the operating system. FreeFEM supports two kinds systems :
Both systems follows the POSIX standard. It is strongly recommended to use the configure script. It is much easier and should be platform independent, you don’t have to know anything about your system. Everything is done for you. However one suggests the use of make for the GNU Project: it is the best make utility and will work without problems with freefem. This utility is available at several ftp sites in France or in the USA.
type:
configure make make install #if you want to install the software on a site
The binary freefem will be in the directory src.
We use autoconf and automake in conjunction in order to be as general as possible. These tools are not required to use or compile freeFEM but if you want to change the code you will need these.
These tools are available on the GNU ftp site: ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu. You can get them in France at ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/gnu.
Type:
configure make make install #if you want to install the software on a site
By default freefem is compiled with the -O2 flags for optimization. If you want to debug the library, then USE the following configure option --enable-debug. That is to say, type
configure --enable-debug
at the configure step of the installation.