How to install GSL on linux (ubuntu)

The GNU Scientific Library is an open source (GPL) library of useful routines for scientific and numerical computing. It will (should) build on ony system with an ANSI C compiler.

Using GSL on the department Linux machines
I did this istallation on atlas, which is running Linux on Intel and has gcc installed. Results may (but shouldn't) be different on one of the Sun machines like zeus.

the current version of GSL and place the file in your home directory. This tutorial assumes version 1.7, so change filenames as appropriate.
Unpack the file with the following command:

tar -zxvf gsl-1.7.tar.gz

This will create a directory called gsl-1.7 in your home directory. Change to this directory.

cd gsl-1.7

The next step is to configure the installation and tell the system where to install the files. I have a directory called "dev" in my home directory that I use for this sort of thing. These instructions will install the files in the directory /home/steve/dev.

First, create the dev directory.

mkdir /home/steve/dev

Now configure the installation and tell it to use your new directory. This step may take a minute.

./configure --prefix=/home/steve/dev

If there are no errors, compile the library. This step will take several minutes.

make

Now it is a good idea to test the library before actually installing it. Again, this step will take some time.

make check

If there are no errors, go ahead and install the library.

make install

Now we can write a test program to see if the library works. Create the following program and name it example.c

#include <stdio.h>#include <gsl/gsl_sf_bessel.h>intmain (void){    double x = 5.0;    double y = gsl_sf_bessel_J0 (x);    printf ("J0(%g) = %.18e/n", x, y);    return 0;}

Compile and link the program with the following commands (but use the correct path for your username):

gcc -Wall -I/home/steve/dev/include -c example.c

gcc -L/home/steve/dev/lib example.o -lgsl -lgslcblas -lm

Now try running your program!

./a.out

You should get the following output:

J0(5) = -1.775967713143382920e-01

Now that you have the GSL installed, you can remove the gsl-1.7 directory that was created in your home directory.