Windows

On Windows we recommend using Conda to install and build Finesse. It is possible to build Finesse without using Conda but it is difficult and therefore not recommended. Finesse must be built using GCC or MSVC. The MSYS2 build tools can instead be used to compile Finesse and these are easily installed via Conda.

You must have Git installed to access the source code repository. You can install Git in a variety of ways on Windows. The most common way is by following these instructions

From an Anaconda Prompt or Miniconda Prompt download the git repository into your desired directory:

C:\> git clone -b master https://gitlab.com/ifosim/finesse/finesse3.git
C:\> cd finesse3

The above will checkout the stable version of Finesse in the master branch. See below for details on how to change to different versions such as the most current development release.

If you haven’t already got an environment you would like to use Finesse in you can create a new one using the following commands:

C:\> conda env create -n finesse3 -f environment-win.yml
C:\> conda activate finesse3

The last step to get Finesse to work is to build and install Finesse into your local environment’s library path:

C:\> make install-conda

Once you’ve run this command, you can quickly test if it has worked by running:

C:\> kat3 --version

If you see the Finesse version printed, everything should be configured correctly.

Rebuilding Finesse

Once you have installed Finesse from source you can easily get updates and rebuild it by executing the following commands from the Finesse repository directory:

C:\> git pull
C:\> make clean
C:\> make install-pep517

This should rebuild Finesse and can take some time. For small changes to the source you can omit make clean.

Occasionally changes to the build tooling will require a complete reset of the local clone of the Finesse repository. To do this, the command make realclean can be used above instead of make clean.

Changing Finesse versions after installation

Switching versions in Finesse involves checking out a different git branch. The process is similar to above when rebuilding, except you use git checkout beforehand. It is recommended to use make clean when switching branches or commits.

C:\> cd finesse3
C:\> git checkout [ref]
C:\> git pull
C:\> make clean
C:\> make install-pep517

You can replace [ref] with one of:

master

The latest stable release.

develop

The latest development release (not necesarily stable or runnable).

e.g. 3.0a1

A particular tag.