Building Executable Applications

This page is a guide on making standalone executable applications that don’t use the CxxTest framework. By executable application or app, we mean any .cpp file with its own main function, making use of Chaste functionality.

App locations#

The Chaste build system assumes that the following locations may contain apps:

• Chaste/apps/src (contains the Cardiac executable)
• Chaste/projects/<project_name>/apps/src (see User Projects if you are unfamiliar with user projects)

Building the app#

To build an app, first configure Chaste as normal:

cmake /path/to/Chaste

If you are building an app in Chaste/apps/src, you should see something similar to the following as part of the output:

...
Configuring main Chaste apps
Configuring MeshConvert app
Configuring Chaste app
...

The Chaste app is the “cardiac executable”, see Cardiac Executable Tutorials for how to use it. If you have made a new app within a user project, you should see something similar to:

...
Configuring project project_<project_name>
Configuring tests for project project_<project_name>
Configuring apps for project project_<project_name>
Configuring <app_name_1> app for project_<project_name>
Configuring <app_name_2> app for project_<project_name>
...

You then simply build the app as you would any other target:

make -j4 <app_name>

The executable app will be created in either:

• /path/to/build_dir/apps
• /path/to/build_dir/projects/<project_name>/apps

depending on whether the app is in the main Chaste apps directory, or a project directory.