Installing YARS

This post explains how to download and install YARS on macOS and Linux.

Requirements
To install YARS, you will need the following packages and tools:

  • boost
  • bullet
  • xerces-c
  • ogre-1.9 (optional)
  • libquicktime (optional)
  • cmake
  • ninja (optional)

boost, bullet, xerces-c and cmake are required. Ogre3D is required for visualisation, but YARS can also be compiled without GUI for cluster usage. libquicktime is required to generate videos directly from YARS. Generating frame by frame image sequences is also possible if libquicktime is not installed. I recommend to install ninja, because it is a faster make.

macOS Sierra

  1. Assuming you use homebrew , install the required packages with the following command: brew install cmake ninja xerces-c libquicktime bullet boost . Depending on your settings, this make take a while (boost takes some time to compile).
  2. Open the terminal and navigate to the directory in which you want to download the YARS source, e.g. cd ~/projects/
  3. Either download the source as zip from the YARS Github Repository or download it using git git clone https://github.com/kzahedi/YARS
  4. Create a build directory mkdir YARS/build and navigate to it cd YARS/build
  5. The standard compile configuration should be sufficient to start with, which is why a cmake .. should work well. In case you want to review or change some settings, I recommend to use cmake-ncurses ccmake .. . To use ninja instead of make, both commands must be cmake -G Ninja .. or ccmake -G Ninja .. .
  6. Compile with make or ninja .
  7. To test YARS, run the following command ./bin/yars xml/braitenberg.xml .

Ubuntu 18.04

After installing the required and useful packages, the next step is to download and configure YARS.

Choose the options that you like to activate/deactivate. Press ‘c’ until the ‘g’ option shows up. Press ‘g’. Then

Depending on your system, you might have to add the following line to your shell-rc, so that YARS can find the Ogre libraries.

If everything works out fine, you should see the Braitenberg vehicle simulation as shown below.


Braitenberg simulation

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