Installation of Firedrake

If the advice below is not enough, you might go to Firedrake’s installation debugging flowchart.

Thanks Stefano!

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Firedrake on Google Colab

1. Navigate to fem-on-colab.github.io and choose the Packages tab
2. Scroll down to firedrake. Copy the block of Python under “Real Mode”.
3. Go to Google colab at https://colab.research.google.com/
4. In the pop-up window choose “+ New notebook”.
5. Paste the block of Python into the first cell.
6. Hit shift-enter. Stuff will be generated. After about a minute the spinny thing should stop.
7. Into the next cell type from firedrake import * and shift-enter. This should give no warnings or errors. Look for a green checkmark! You have Firedrake!
8. As a further test and demo, copying my start.py script from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bueler/fe-seminar/main/py/start.py into a cell and shift-enter should cause no warnings or errors, and it should produce a nice figure!

Firedrake on Linux/MacOS

• For Linux and MacOS users simply follow the instructions outlined on www.firedrakeproject.org/download.html
• It is highly recommended that, before you begin, you deactivate Anaconda. There are a few ways to go about this and they are outlined in the ‘System anti-requirements’ section of the firedrake download page.
• It is recommended that MacOS users use a Python distribution that is installed by Homebrew. To install Homebrew, visit brew.sh. Then you can install python using brew install python3.

Firedrake on Windows

• For now Windows support requires the use of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
• github.com/firedrakeproject/firedrake/wiki/Installing-on-Windows-Subsystem-for-Linux seems to be the most up to date guide for getting this setup.