Installation

The current version of Xoptfoil2 is available in the Releases section of the GitHub repository. The assets include zip files for:

• a ready-built version for Windows
• the source files for building Xoptfoil2 under Linux

Windows

Download the Windows zip file and extract it into any directory, for example directly on the Desktop for a first try. Xoptfoil2 is a lightweight installation and does not install other artifacts on your PC.

To use Xoptfoil2 from any directory, add its installation folder to the Windows Path environment variable. This avoids having to copy xoptfoil2.exe into each new project folder.

Linux (Debian-based)

Download the Source Code tar file and extract it in any folder. In addition to the standard development tools of a typical Linux distribution, the Fortran compiler and CMake are required. These tools can be installed with:

sudo apt install gfortran
sudo apt install cmake

In the project root, run the build_linux.sh script:

bash build_linux.sh

This builds and installs Xoptfoil2 to the repository-local default location linux/bin.

By copying xoptfoil2 and worker to /usr/local/bin, they can be accessed from every directory. In some cases, you may need to mark the files as executable:

sudo chmod +x xoptfoil2
sudo chmod +x worker

If you prefer a system-wide installation via CMake, configure with /usr/local as install prefix and run install with sudo:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
sudo cmake --build build --target install

Note: CMake appends bin because the project installs executables with DESTINATION bin, so the final location becomes /usr/local/bin.

Linux command names are case-sensitive. Use xoptfoil2 (lowercase), not Xoptfoil2.

CMake build

Independent of the helper scripts, the standard CMake workflow can be used on both platforms:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build
cmake --build build --target install

To override the default install location:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<your_path>

The binary version string is defined centrally in the root VERSION file. For ad-hoc builds it can be overridden during configuration with -DXOPTFOIL_VERSION_STRING=<value>.

The default install locations are windows/bin (Windows) and linux/bin (Linux).