Conda MOOSE Environment
Our preferred method for obtaining libraries necessary for MOOSE based Application development, is via Conda's myriad array of libraries. Follow these instructions to create an environment on your machine using Conda. At this time, an option to install MOOSE directly on a Windows system is not yet supported. On-going efforts are being made to add a conda installation option for Windows, and an experimental WSL option is available.
Minimum System Requirements
In general, the following is required for MOOSE-based development:
A POSIX compliant Unix-like operating system. This includes any modern Linux-based operating system (e.g., Ubuntu, Fedora, Rocky, etc.), or a Macintosh machine running either of the last two MacOS releases.
| Hardware | Information |
|---|---|
| CPU Architecture | x86_64, ARM (Apple Silicon) |
| Memory | 8 GB (16 GBs for debug compilation) |
| Disk Space | 30GB |
| Libraries | Version / Information |
|---|---|
| GCC | 9.0.0 - 12.2.1 |
| LLVM/Clang | 10.0.1 - 19 |
| Intel (ICC/ICX) | Not supported at this time |
| Python | 3.10 - 3.13 |
| Python Packages | packaging pyaml jinja2 |
Prerequisites
Follow the steps below depending on your platform to install Miniforge. If you run into issues during these steps, please visit our Conda Troubleshooting guide.
Linux Users:
curl -L -O https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Miniforge3-Linux-x86_64.sh bash Miniforge3-Linux-x86_64.sh -b -p ~/miniforgeMacintosh Users with Apple Silicon processors:
curl -L -O https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh bash Miniforge3-MacOSX-arm64.sh -b -p ~/miniforge
Apple will cease support for all Intel based Macintosh machines in 2026, as will we at that time.
read: As our Continuous Integration Intel machines break, they are replaced with Apple Silicon. This will limit our ability to test new features for Intel compatibility.
Macintosh Users with Intel processors:
curl -L -O https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Miniforge3-MacOSX-x86_64.sh
bash Miniforge3-MacOSX-x86_64.sh -b -p ~/miniforge
With Miniforge installed in your home directory, export PATH so that it may be used:
export PATH=$HOME/miniforge/bin:$PATH
Now that we can execute conda, initialize it and then exit the terminal:
conda init --all
exit
Upon restarting your terminal, you should see your prompt prefixed with (base). This indicates you are in the base environment, and Conda is ready for operation:
$ (base) ~>
The next thing you should do after a fresh install, is perform an update to the base Conda environment:
conda update --all --yes
Add INL's public channel to gain access to INL's Conda package library:
conda config --add channels https://conda.software.inl.gov/public
If you find yourself using sudo commands while engaging Conda commands... something is not right. The most common reason for needing sudo is due to an improper Conda installation. Conda should be installed to your home directory, without any use of sudo.
Install MOOSE
Create a unique conda environment for MOOSE, named moose, and install the MOOSE dependency packages:
conda create -n moose moose-dev=2025.06.26=mpich
After the installation completes, activate the new environment:
conda activate moose
If you are running into errors, please see our troubleshooting guide for Conda.
Know that you will need to conda activate moose for each terminal window you open, and each time you wish to perform MOOSE related work. If you wish to make this automatic, you can add that command to the end of your shell profile with the command below:
if [[ "$0" = *"bash" ]]; then
echo "conda activate moose" >> ~/.bash_profile
elif [[ "$0" = "zsh" ]]; then
echo "conda activate moose" >> ~/.zshrc
fi
Clone FALCON
FALCON is hosted on GitHub and should be cloned directly from there using git. We recommend creating the directory, ~/projects, to put all of your FALCON related work.
To clone FALCON, run the following commands in a terminal.
mkdir ~/projects
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/idaholab/falcon.git
cd falcon
git checkout master
git submodule update --init moose
Compile and Test FALCON
After cloning, FALCON should be compiled and tested before use.
mamba activate moose
cd ~/projects/falcon
make -j 4
./run_tests -j 4
The number 4 should be replaced with the number of processors you have available on your system.
If the installation was successful you should see most of the tests passing (some tests will be skipped depending on your system environment).
You now have a working copy of FALCON.
Update FALCON
FALCON does not use traditional versioning, is under heavy development, and is being updated continuously. Therefore, it is critical that you continue to update FALCON regularly to get the latest features. Following are the steps to update FALCON.
First update the MOOSE environment:
mamba activate moose
mamba update --all
Then, update FALCON using the following commands:
cd ~/projects/falcon
git fetch origin
git rebase origin/master
git submodule update
Compile and test your fresh copy.
cd ~/projects/falcon
make -j4
./run_tests -j4
Uninstall
If you wish to remove the moose environment at any time, you may do so using the following commands:
conda activate base
conda env remove -n moose