Installation from source

The building of the falcon app is based on cmake and fetch_dependency to manage libraries and extensions. The plugin can be specified by modifying the extensions.txt file at the root of falcon_core.

Download

Download the latest source from https://bitbucket.org/kloostermannerflab/falcon-core/downloads/?tab=downloads.

Dependencies

• CMAKE

The build system is based on CMake (minimum version 3.11). Last version of CMake are available through pip.

pip install cmake

• zeromq

sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev

• g++-5 (or upper)

G++ v.5 or upper is needed in order to have all libraries of the C++11 standard. In order to install it type in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install g++

• External libraries included in source tree (just for information, you don’t need to do anything normally)

  • cmdline (header only library)

  • disruptor

  • yaml-cpp : https://github.com/jbeder/yaml-cpp.git

  • cppzmq : https://github.com/zeromq/cppzmq.git

  • g3log : https://github.com/KjellKod/g3log.git

  • unit : https://github.com/LLNL/units.git

Build instructions

Compiling falcon has only been tested with GNU g++ compiler. You should use version 5 or upper. The falcon-core repository does not contains any extensions. You will have to add, at least, the core extension to the extensions.txt.

How extensions are found and added to build ?

Extensions are added through the FetchContent feature of CMake. It allows to link in the Falcon CMake the different git repository (or local folder) containing the extension. This extension needs to contain at least CMake. This solution allows to use a specific version of an extension by adding a tag version in the option.

The CmakeList.txt will read the extensions.txt file described below :

enable , extension name , extension path , extension version (optional)
1 , extensions , https://bitbucket.org/kloostermannerflab/falcon-fklab-extensions, 1.3.0

(latest) version for the falcon-fklab-extensions (followed the falcon-core release tag) :

• 1.3.0 => latest stable version

• develop

Enable can be 3 different values : 0 (not build)/ 1 (build)/ dev (develop mode)

The build mode will import the repository in the commit state (when not specified, the commit is the last one on the master head). The dev mode will build the repository in its actual local state.

Command line build

1. Select first the falcon-core version

git checkout 1.3.0 # latest stable version merged on the master branch
git checkout develop # Contains the processors extensions to work with neuropixels data

1. Verify your extensions file. It should contains at least the falcon-fklab-extensions with the matching version chosen in falcon-core For more information on how to integrate third party extensions to the build, refer to the build system documentation.

2. Choose your build type :

   • Debug build

     mkdir build
     cd build
     cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug  # set the resource folder in the build folder + activate debug mode
     make
     
     cd falcon
     sudo setcap 'cap_sys_nice=pe' ./falcon
     

     Check that you can run falcon correctly

     ./falcon --help  # Show the help mode
     ./falcon         # Display all processors available in this build and wait to send a graph from cloud command
     ./falcon [graph_file] # Build the graph and wait a command to run
     

   • Installation build

     mkdir build
     cd build
     cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME/opt/falcon-core"  # set the install and the resource folder in the path of your choice
     make install
     
     # Add the installation path in your $PATH if not already the case
     sudo setcap 'cap_sys_nice=pe' falcon # The last step is optional and will allow falcon to more finely control CPU core utilization.
     

     Check that you can run falcon correctly

     falcon --help  # Show the help mode
     falcon         # Display all processors available in this build and wait to send a graph from cloud command
     falcon [graph_file] # Build the graph and wait a command to run