Installing the FLOS library for Lua

Note

For background on FLOS, please see the flos documentation site

To take advantage of the simulation functionality implemented with Lua scripts (e.g., NEB, new structural relaxation algorithms, etc), the FLOS library needs to be installed and the LUA_PATH appropriately configured.

The procedure is really simple. First, choose a place for the FLOS library, and change your working directory to that location. Then:

git clone https://github.com/siesta-project/flos.git
cd flos
git submodule init
git submodule update

That’s it for the installation, but now we need to tell Lua where to find the library. For this, you need to put a line in your .bashrc file, or issue the command for every work session in which you intend to use Lua functionality:

export LUA_PATH="${FLOS_PLACE}/flos/?.lua;${FLOS_PLACE}/flos/?/init.lua;$LUA_PATH;;"

where you need to substitute ${FLOS_PLACE} by the right directory where you invoked the installation command. (For example, if you chose your home directory, just replace ${FLOS_PLACE} by $HOME in the above export command).