GNU Scientific Library

On the cluster, the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) version 2.6 is installed.

The GNU Scientific Library is a collection of functions, written in C, for the purpose of numerical calculations (e.g routines for linear algebra and fast Fourier transforms). The complete documentation and feature list can be found here.

You can load the GSL with the following command:

module load gsl

Note that due to the module structure of OpenHPC, the GSL module may not be always visible with module avail. It is only visible, when a compiler module is loaded. By default, the compiler module gnu9 (GCC 9.3.0) is always loaded, however you might have unloaded it intentionally or accidentally. In that case, you can show details with module spider gsl.

The GSL installation is available in multiple variants, depending on which compiler you want to use. You can list the variants with the following command:

$ module spider gsl
(...)
    Description:
      GNU Scientific Library (GSL)

    You will need to load all module(s) on any one of the lines below before the "gsl/2.6" module is available to load.

      gnu9/9.3.0
      intel/19.0.5.100010_cm9.0_6a80743563
      intel/19.0.5_2019
      intel/19.1.2.100006_cm9.0_ae8d786e90

If you want to compile a program that uses the GSL, you can reference the corresponding environment variables. GSL will set at least the following variables:

• GSL_DIR: GSL installation directory
• GSL_LIB: GSL library directory
• GSL_INC: GSL include directory

Additionally, variables like PATH and LD_LIBRAY_PATH are modified. You can display a complete list of changes made during load with module show gsl.

Caution: The GSL uses dynamically loaded libraries (shared objects). This means that the gsl module needs to be loaded during execution time of your program as well (or at least the GSL library directory needs to be in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH).