Error when building from source, release archive 0.15.3 (missing files in archive)

User Support
1

I tried to build the latest release version of OpenMC (0.15.3) manually from the provided source archive. However when following the instructions for building, I got the following error message at the step

cmake ..

specifically:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:235 (message):
  The git submodules were not downloaded! GIT_SUBMODULE was turned off or
  failed.  Please update submodules and try again.

How do I build the most recent release version? Preferably without some esoteric git-song-and-dance, because building a specific version with as little hassle as possible should be the whole point of an archived snapshot of the code at a specific version.

OS is Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS with current updates and building of the current code when cloned from git doesn’t throw such an error.

2

This error message is shown because the contents of /vendor/pugixml are missing. Running diff over both versions shows quite a few more files only present in the folder as cloned from git and I have no idea which ones are actually important. Great job, publishing a source code archive with essential bits missing. XKCD 1597 in action?

The code as cloned fresh from github seems to be building just fine, but installing the random version of today is something I am not particularly keen on.

3

OpenMC uses git submodules to provide several C++ dependencies. Unfortunately one of the side effects is that source archives do not include these submodules. In your case, since you have git I would recommend just cloning the specific tag of the most recent release:

git clone --branch v0.15.3 https://github.com/openmc-dev/openmc
4

Thank you, this looks promising (it will be a while before I have time to actually test it).