Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

Protein folding is linked to disease, such as Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

What is protein folding?

Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Building from Source

FAHClient has several dependencies that must first be satisfied before the client itself can be built. This section outlines the recommended procedure.

Install Git & Scons

If you don't already have them install both Git and SCons:

Or in Debian Linux:

sudo apt-get install scons git

Get the Source

First create a build directory then get all the source repositories from GitHub:

mkdir build
cd build
git clone https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentLLC/cbang.git
git clone https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/libfah.git
git clone https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-viewer.git
git clone https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-web-client.git
git clone https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-client.git

Setup the Environment

In the build directory setup some environment variables which will allow the build systems to find each other.

In Windows:

set BUILD_ROOT=%HOMEPATH%\path\to\build
set CBANG_HOME=%BUILD_ROOT%\cbang
set LIBFAH_HOME=%BUILD_ROOT%\libfah
set FAH_VIEWER_HOME=%BUILD_ROOT%\fah-viewer
set FAH_WEB_CLIENT_HOME=%BUILD_ROOT%\fah-web-client
set FAH_CLIENT_HOME=%BUILD_ROOT%\fah-client

Replace %HOMEPATH%\path\to\build with the correct path.

In Linux or OS-X:

BUILD_ROOT=$HOME/path/to/build
export CBANG_HOME=$BUILD_ROOT/cbang
export LIBFAH_HOME=$BUILD_ROOT/libfah
export FAH_VIEWER_HOME=$BUILD_ROOT/fah-viewer
export FAH_WEB_CLIENT_HOME=$BUILD_ROOT/fah-web-client
export FAH_CLIENT_HOME=$BUILD_ROOT/fah-client

Replace $HOME/path/to/build with the correct path.

It is often convenient to put these variables in a env file, or env.bat for Windows. Then you can reload the environment at any time with:

In Windows:

env.bat

In Linux or OS-X:

source ./env

Build C!

See the link below for instructions:

https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentLLC/cbang#prerequisites

Build FAHViewer

See the link below for instructions:

https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-viewer#prerequisites

Build FAHClient

Once you've got the code, setup your environment and built both C! & FAHViewer:

scons -C $LIBFAH_HOME
scons -C $FAH_VIEWER_HOME
scons -C $FAH_WEB_CLIENT_HOME
scons -C $FAH_CLIENT_HOME

If all goes well this will produce FAHClient as well as a few other executables in $FAH_CLIENT_HOME.

Debug Build

To build in debug mode add debug=1 optimze=0 to all of the scons commands.

Troubleshooting

Build Errors

If you encounter errors during the build process you can try bulding in non-strict mode by adding strict=0 to the scons commands. This tells the build system to not treat compile warnings as errors.

SCons Configuration Errors

If a build fails, SCons will usually create a file called config.log. If you look towards the end of the file you can often see exactly what failed. When reporting build problems it is a good idea to include this file in the report.

Resetting SCons

Sometimes SCons get's messed up. This can happen if it is interrupted during the configuration process. You can delete SCons' data and start again with the following commands:

In Windows:

rd /S /Q .sconf_temp
del .sconsign.dblite

In Linux or OS-X:

rm -rf .scons*

Then try your build again.