# libxc

**Repository Path**: restgroup/libxc

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: libxc
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: MPL-2.0
- **Default Branch**: devel
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2025-01-11
- **Last Updated**: 2025-01-11

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

# Libxc

Libxc is a library of exchange-correlation functionals for
density-functional theory. The aim is to provide a portable, well
tested and reliable set of exchange and correlation functionals that
can be used by a variety of programs.

Libxc is free software. It is distributed under the Mozilla Public
License, version 2.0, see https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/2.0/.

For more information, please check the manual at
http://libxc.gitlab.io

## Citing Libxc

Following good scientific practice, any publication using functionals from Libxc should cite Libxc. To cite Libxc, the current reference is
* [Susi Lehtola, Conrad Steigemann, Micael J. T. Oliveira, and Miguel A. L. Marques, *Recent developments in Libxc - A comprehensive library of functionals for density functional theory*, Software X **7**, 1 (2018)](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2017.11.002)

Any program interfacing Libxc should analogously
* print out a message when Libxc is used in a calculation
* print out the used version of Libxc, provided by e.g. the `xc_version_string()` function, and
* print out the literature reference of Libxc, which is provided by the `xc_reference()` function, in addition to the literature references of the used density functionals which are also provided by Libxc

Documenting the use of Libxc for the density functional is important, since many functionals have dissimilar implementations in various programs; see
* [Susi Lehtola and Miguel. A. L. Marques, *Reproducibility of density functional approximations: how new functionals should be reported*, J. Chem. Phys. **159**, 114116 (2023)](https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0167763)

Libxc switched to automatical code generation with Maple in version 4 in 2017, while previous versions employed hand-written C implementations. The reference for early (<= 3) versions of Libxc---which is now obsolete---is
* [Miguel A. L. Marques, Micael J. T. Oliveira, and Tobias Burnus, *Libxc: a library of exchange and correlation functionals for density functional theory*, Comput. Phys. Commun. **183**, 2272 (2012)](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2012.05.007)

## INSTALLATION

### Autotools

The recommended way to install the library is by using GNU Autotools.

To install the library, just use the standard procedure:
```
./configure --prefix=PATH/TO/LIBXC
make
make check
make install
```

If you're not using a stable release tarball, you'll first need to
generate ```configure``` with ```autoreconf -i```.


### CMake

Support for CMake has also been recently contributed by Lori Burns.

The CMake file has the following caveats

* tested on Linux and Mac, static and shared lib, namespaced and non-namespaced headers, but really only to the extent that it works for Psi4
* all the fancy libtool options and Fortran interface _not_ tested
* test suite executed after build via `ctest`. But it has always totally passed or totally failed, which doesn't inspire confidence
* The generated `libxc_docs.txt` is large, and the generation step sometimes balks on it, leading to `xc_funcs.h` not found errors. Just execute again.

#### Building with CMake

Use the following procedure:

```bash
cmake -H. -Bobjdir
cd objdir && make
make test
make install
```

The build is also responsive to

* static/shared toggle `BUILD_SHARED_LIBS`
* install location `CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX`
* namespacing of headers `NAMESPACE_INSTALL_INCLUDEDIR`
* of course, `CMAKE_C_COMPILER`, `BUILD_TESTING`, and `CMAKE_C_FLAGS`

See [CMakeLists.txt](CMakeLists.txt) for options details. All these build options should be passed as `cmake -DOPTION`.

#### Detecting with CMake

CMake builds install with `LibxcConfig.cmake`, `LibxcConfigVersion.cmake`, and `LibxcTargets.cmake` files suitable for use with CMake [`find_package()`](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/v3.2/command/find_package.html) in `CONFIG` mode.

* `find_package(Libxc)` - find any xc libraries and headers
* `find_package(Libxc 3.0.0 EXACT CONFIG REQUIRED COMPONENTS static)` - find Libxc exactly version 3.0.0 built with static libraries or die trying

See [cmake/LibxcConfig.cmake.in](cmake/LibxcConfig.cmake.in) for details of how to detect the Config file and what CMake variables and targets are exported to your project.

#### Use with CMake

After `find_package(Libxc ...)`,

* test if package found with `if(${Libxc_FOUND})` or `if(TARGET Libxc::xc)`
* link to library (establishes dependency), including header and definitions configuration with `target_link_libraries(mytarget Libxc::xc)`
* include header files using `target_include_directories(mytarget PRIVATE $<TARGET_PROPERTY:Libxc::xc,INTERFACE_INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES>)`
* compile target applying `-DUSING_Libxc` definition using `target_compile_definitions(mytarget PRIVATE $<TARGET_PROPERTY:Libxc::xc,INTERFACE_COMPILE_DEFINITIONS>)`

### GPU support with CUDA

Libxc has experimental support for GPU execution using Cuda.
It is enabled with the `--enable-cuda` configure option (CMake is not supported).
To compile libxc you have to pass the `nvcc -x cu` as compiler and `nvcc` (without `-x cu`) as the linker.
This is an example of configuring libxc with cuda support (note that you have to adjust the location of `nvcc` and your GPUs architecture):

```bash
export CC="/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc -x cu"
export CFLAGS="-arch=sm_70 -g -O3 --std=c++03 --compiler-options -g,-Wall,-Wfatal-errors,-Wno-unused-variable,-Wno-unused-but-set-variable"
export CCLD="/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc"
./configure --enable-cuda
```

When running with libxc compiled with Cuda, both the input and output arrays must always be allocated on the GPU (or using unified memory).
Libxc will fail (most likely you will get a segmentation fault) if a CPU array is passed.

### Python Library

Optional Python bindings are available through the NumPy ctypes module. To install
into Python site-packages please run:
`pip install .`

or, to install locally for development:
`pip install -e .`

The Python bindings require the CMake compilation pathway and the Python
Numerical Python library. A short usage example is provided below:
```python
# Import pylibxc and numpy
>>> import pylibxc
>>> import numpy as np
# Build functional
>>> func = pylibxc.LibXCFunctional("gga_c_pbe", "unpolarized")

# Create input
>>> inp = {}
>>> inp["rho"] = np.random.random((3))
>>> inp["sigma"] = np.random.random((3))

# Compute
>>> ret = func.compute(inp)
>>> for k, v in ret.items():
>>>     print(k, v)

zk [[-0.02150768]
 [-0.02897835]
 [-0.07031054]]
vrho [[-0.06756716]
 [-0.07525754]
 [-0.08021595]]
vsigma [[0.00547993]
 [0.01114585]
 [0.00425432]]
```

## ADDING NEW FUNCTIONALS

If you are developing a new functional, we would love to implement it
in Libxc for you even before the functional has been published, since
many published functionals contain typos, errors and reference data,
see [doi:10.1063/5.0167763](https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0167763); please
contact the Libxc maintainers (Susi Lehtola and Miguel Marques) via
GitLab or email.

You can also add functionals yourself; the procedure for this is
summarized below.

### Maple implementation

The typical process to add a new functional starts with developing the
Maple implementation of the base density functional approximation:
implement the exchange-correlation energy density per particle in
Maple; see the `maple/` directory for existing implementations of
various functionals. In the second step, one generates the C source
with Maple by running `python3 scripts/maple2c.py
--functional=NAME_OF_FUNCTIONAL --maxorder=4`.  Now, the functional's
kernel is in the corresponding subdirectory of `src/maple2c/`.

The Maple and the autogenerated .c files need to be added to the
corresponding directories' Makefile.am files.

### Libxc definition

Having implemented the density functional approximation, the next step
is to make Libxc know about it. This happens by writing a suitable
implementation in `src/`. The definition of a functional consists of
the following pieces:

1. the `#define` macro definition at the top of the file, which
contains the numerical functional identifier and a comment,
2. declarations of any external parameters that are used by the Maple
kernels and arrays specifying their default values, possibly
supplemented with a parameter setter function, and
3. the functional information, `xc_func_info_type`, which is
essentially a constructor that specifies the type, literature
references, flags, default parameters, thresholds, and worker
functions of the functional.

It is usually best to start from the implementation of a similar
functional. Once you have added the Libxc definitions, regenerate the
list of functionals with `make funcs`, or `python3
../scripts/get_functional_info.py --srcdir=..` in the `src/`
directory. This will generate the `funcs_*.c` files that contain the
definitions of all the functionals, as well as the lists of
functionals in `xc_funcs.h`, `xc_funcs_worker.h` and `libxc_inc.f90`.

If you add a new C file, it needs to be added to Makefile.am as well
as CMakeLists.txt.

### Bibliography updates

To add new reference(s) in the bibliography, add them in BibTex format
in `libxc.bib`, following the style of the existing versions. To
regenerate the list of references, stored in `src/references.h` and
`src/references.c`, run `make references`, or `python3
../scripts/get_references.py ../libxc.bib` in the `src/` directory.

### Adding the functional to the test suite

Once you've established the correctness of the functional's
implementation, add the functional to the test suite.  This is done by
running `./xc-reset-regression name_of_functional` in the `testsuite/`
directory, and adding the generated `.tar.bz2` files to the
repository.


## FILE ORGANIZATION

The distribution is organized as follows

| | |
| --- | --- |
| ./cmake | CMake helper files |
| ./build | pkgconfig and Fedora spec files |
| ./m4 | m4 scripts used by configure.ac, and libxc.m4 used by other projects linking to libxc |
| ./maple |the Maple source code for the functionals |
| ./scripts | various scripts for libxc development |
| ./src | source files |
| ./testsuite | regression tests |

The most important contents of the src directory for users are

| | |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| xc.h                | main header file with all external definitions |
| xc_funcs.h	      | automatically generated file with the list of functionals |

In addition, developers will be interested in the following

| | |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| util.h              | header file with internal definitions |
| \*.f90 \*.F90 xc_f.c string_f.h | Fortran 90 interface |
| \*.f03 \*.F03         | Fortran 2003 interface |
| funcs_*.c	      | automatically generated files with the functional definitions |
| functionals.c       | generic interface to simplify access to the different families |
| lda.c gga.c mgga.c  | interface to the different families of functionals |
| special_functions.c | implementation of a series of special functions |
| hyb_gga_*.c         | definition of the different hybrid GGA functionals |
| hyb_mgga_*.c         | definition of the different hybrid meta-GGA functionals |
| lda_*.c             | definition of the different LDA functionals |
| gga_*.c             | definition of the different GGA functionals |
| mgga_*.c	      | definition of the different meta-GGA functionals |
| work_lda.c          | code that simplifies the implementation of LDAs |
| work_gga_x.c        | code that simplifies the implementation of exchange GGAs |
| work_gga_c.c	      | code that simplifies the implementation of some correlation GGAs |
| work_mgga_x.c       | code that simplifies the implementation of exchange meta-GGAs |
| work_mgga_c.c       | code that simplifies the implementation of some correlation meta-GGAs |

Notes:

* Most functionals use the framework contained in a work\_\*.c file. This simplifies tremendously the implementation of the different functionals. The work\_\*.c are #include'd in the functional implementations through a preprocessor directive.
* Some files contain more than one functional, as similar functionals are usually grouped together. Therefore, the best way to find where a functional is implemented is by looking at its keyword in xc_funcs.h and using grep to find the correct file.
* The files where the functionals are defined are named as family_type_name.c, where:
  family - functional family (lda, gga, hyb_gga, or mgga)
  type   - type of functional (x, c, xc, or k)
  name   - name of the functional or class of functionals