The following explains how to configure your own application with your list of modules, how to define and run this application on one or more computers. You can choose one of the following approaches:

use an Application profile
use a Virtual application

General principles

A SALOME application is defined by:

a set of modules (GEOM, SMESH, ASTER...)
a set of informatic resources (images, documentation, tests...) binding the modules together, also called profile.
a launcher: a python script that creates a context (set of environment variables usable by the SALOME modules) and runs an instance of SALOME.

A SALOME user can define several SALOME applications. These applications are runnable from the same user account. These applications may share the same KERNEL and modules. Thus, the application configuration is independant of KERNEL and must not be put in KERNEL_ROOT_DIR.

Furthermore, prerequisites may not be the same on all the applications.

A SALOME session can run on a several computers.

Binary modules and prerequisites are installed on the different computers. There is no need to have all the modules on each computer (the minimum is KERNEL).

There is no need of standardization or centralised information on the details of configuration on each computer (PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, environment variables) provided the application modules are version - compatible. Details of configuration stay private to the computer, and are held by scripts on each computer.

There is no hierarchy between the computers (for example only one master computer used to launch application).

The SALOME user has an account on all the computers. Access between account is via rsh or ssh and must be configured for use without password (key exchange for ssh). Account may be different on each computer.

Application profile

The user can generate a default profile for its application using the following command:

python ${KERNEL_ROOT_DIR}/bin/salome/app-quickstart.py --prefix=<generation directory> --name=<application's name> --modules=<list,of,modules>

Likely, the user would like to personalize its application's profile. Then, the profile can be compiled using the standard cmake procedure:

cmake
make
make install

This profile can be used within a python launcher - like the salome command - by setting context variable SalomeAppConfig to the path where the profile is installed.

Virtual application

First, the user must create a SALOME application configuration file by modifying a copy of ${KERNEL_ROOT_DIR}/bin/salome/config_appli.xml. The file describes the list of SALOME modules used in the application, with their respective installation path. The configuration file also defines the path of an existing script which sets the SALOME prerequisites (tag "prerequisites"), and optionally, the path of samples directory (SAMPLES_SRC) (tag "samples") and the path of a catalog of resources (tag "resources").

The following command:

python <KERNEL_ROOT_DIR>/bin/salome/appli_gen.py --prefix=<install directory> --config=<configuration file>

creates a SALOME application in the application directory given by the prefix option (local directory by default) with the configuration file given by the config option (config_appli.xml by default).

Providing an existing script for SALOME prerequisites (the same one used for modules compilation, or given with the modules installation), the installation works without further modification for a single computer (unless some modules needs a special environment not defined in the above script).

For a distributed application (several computers), one must copy and adapt CatalogResources.xml from ${KERNEL_ROOT_DIR}/bin/salome/appliskel (see below).

The application directory contains the elements required to run SALOME, for example the salome command, and some context files in env.d directory.