Installation

Quick install

Conda (recommended)

conda install -c conda-forge -c set3mah simcoon

pip

pip install simcoon

Pre-built wheels are available for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (arm64), and Windows (x64) on Python 3.10–3.14.

BLAS/LAPACK and OpenMP

Simcoon uses Armadillo for linear algebra, which in turn relies on a BLAS/LAPACK implementation. The threading model of the BLAS library matters because it can conflict with OpenMP if both are loaded in the same process.

OpenMP is enabled on Linux and macOS for parallel batch operations. On Windows, OpenMP is disabled in the Python bindings to avoid conflicts between different OpenMP runtimes (e.g. vcomp140.dll from MSVC and runtimes from other packages). Batch operations on Windows run sequentially while BLAS handles internal threading.

BLAS/OpenMP summary

Platform

BLAS

OpenMP

Conflict risk

macOS

Apple Accelerate

ON (libomp, bundled in wheel)

None

Linux

System OpenBLAS

ON (libgomp)

None

Windows

vcpkg OpenBLAS (pip) / netlib+MKL (conda)

OFF

None

Using MKL with conda on Linux

If you prefer Intel MKL for performance, switch the BLAS backend and set the threading layer to avoid conflicts between libiomp5 (Intel) and libgomp (GCC):

conda install libblas=*=*mkl mkl
export MKL_THREADING_LAYER=GNU

Developer installation

Prerequisites (conda)

conda create --name simcoon_dev
conda activate simcoon_dev

Linux:

conda env update -f environment.yml

macOS (Apple Silicon):

conda env update -f environment_arm64.yml

Windows:

conda env update -f environment_win.yml

Prerequisites (system packages)

  • Debian/Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get install libarmadillo-dev libopenblas-dev liblapack-dev \
    libgtest-dev ninja-build cmake

  • macOS (Homebrew):

    brew install armadillo ninja cmake

  • Windows (vcpkg):

    vcpkg install armadillo:x64-windows openblas:x64-windows

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/3MAH/simcoon.git
cd simcoon
pip install -e . --no-build-isolation

This builds the C++ library and Python bindings in one step using scikit-build-core.

Enabling OpenMP (optional, for conda environments):

pip install -e . --no-build-isolation \
    --config-settings=cmake.define.SIMCOON_USE_OPENMP=ON

Running tests

Python tests:

pytest

C++ tests:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DSIMCOON_BUILD_TESTS=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build .
ctest --output-on-failure

Using simcoon with fedoo

Simcoon is designed to work with fedoo for finite-element simulations. Both packages can be installed together:

# conda
conda install -c conda-forge -c set3mah simcoon fedoo

# pip
pip install simcoon fedoo

No special configuration is needed – the BLAS/OpenMP setup described above ensures that both libraries coexist without runtime conflicts.