Conda MOOSE Environment

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 ~/miniforge
  

• Macintosh 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
  

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

Install MOOSE

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.

if [[ "$0" = *"bash" ]]; then
    echo "conda activate moose" >> ~/.bash_profile
elif [[ "$0" = "zsh" ]]; then
    echo "conda activate moose" >> ~/.zshrc
fi

Clone MASTODON

MASTODON is hosted on GitHub and should be cloned directly from there using git. We recommend creating the directory, ~/projects, to put all of your MASTODON related work.

MASTODON can be installed with or without BlackBear. BlackBear is a MOOSE-based structural material degradation simulation code and can be included in MASTODON as a submodule to run multi-physics simulations of degraded structures. Below are the instructions to install MASTODON with or without BlackBear.

To clone MASTODON without BlackBear, run the following commands in a terminal.

mkdir ~/projects
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/idaholab/mastodon.git
cd mastodon
git checkout master
git submodule update --init moose

To clone MASTODON with BlackBear, run the following commands in a terminal.

mkdir ~/projects
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/idaholab/mastodon.git
cd mastodon
git checkout master
git submodule update --init moose
git submodule update --init blackbear
cd blackbear
git submodule update --init contrib/neml

Compile and Test MASTODON

It is necessary to build PETSc and libMesh within the MOOSE repository before building any application:

cd ~/projects/moose/scripts
./update_and_rebuild_petsc.sh
./update_and_rebuild_libmesh.sh

On a multiprocessor machine, this process can optionally be done in parallel by setting the JOBS environment variable equal to the number of processors to be used. For example, to build using 8 processors, the libMesh build script can be run as follows:

JOBS=8 ./update_and_rebuild_libmesh.sh

MASTODON should now be ready to be compiled and tested before use. This step is the same with or without BlackBear.

conda activate moose
cd ~/projects/mastodon
make -j 4
./run_tests -j 4

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 MASTODON.

Update MASTODON

MASTODON does not use traditional versioning, is under heavy development, and is being updated continuously. Therefore, it is critical that you continue to update MASTODON regularly to get the latest features. Following are the steps to update MASTODON.

First update the MOOSE environment:

conda activate moose
conda update --all

Then, update MASTODON using the following commands:

cd ~/projects/mastodon
git fetch origin
git rebase origin/master
git submodule update

Compile and test your fresh copy.

cd ~/projects/mastodon
make -j4
./run_tests -j4

Uninstall

conda activate base
conda env remove -n moose