Arbor GUI is a comprehensive tool for building single cell models using Arbor. It strives to be self-contained, fast, and easy to use.
.swc
, NeuroML .nml
, NeuroLucida
.asc
.This project is under active development and welcomes early feedback. As of v0.8, releases of Arbor-GUI follow the version numbering of Arbor, e.g. Arbor-GUI v0.8 includes Arbor v0.8. Releases can be found here. Precompiled and self-contained versions for Macos and Linux are available at the same locations.
Note that the screenshots below are updated less frequently than the actual project. To get a feel for the workflow with Arbor-GUI, you can take a look at the tutorial.
We welcome bug reports and feature requests, please use the issue tracker here on GitHub for these purposes. Building network simulation is out of scope for this project (we might offer a different tool, though).
We have Apple Disk Images and Linux AppImages which are the preferred way of getting and using Arbor GUI. Simply download the version for your system and copy them to a directory of your choosing.
The Arbor GUI requires a functional OpenGL 3.3+ package and recent (as in C++20 supported) C++ compiler to be present on the system. Listed below are the standard instructions to install per platform. Mileage may vary, especially when installing OpenGL. You might need to update drivers, or have to execute other environment specific patches.
If you wish to build and perhaps modify Arbor GUI, start out by cloning the repository and creating a build directory:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/arbor-sim/gui.git
cd arbor-gui
mkdir build
cd build
Next, follow the platform specific instructions.
Install build dependencies
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential libssl-dev \
libxml2-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev \
libxcursor-dev libxi-dev libglu1-mesa-dev \
freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev gcc-10 g++-10
If your cmake version is less than 3.18, you will need to update it as well
cmake --version
3.16 # default on Ubunte 20.04 LTS
# if pip is present
pip install --update cmake
Add GCC10 as alternative to GCC and select it:
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-10 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-10 10
Use gcc --version
to confirm it is now version 10. If not you will
need to run sudo update-alternatives --config gcc
(and its analog for
g++
) and manually select the right number.
Install Arbor GUI
cmake ..
sudo make install -j 4
Users of Windows Subsystem for Linux will have to run an X-Server on their Windows machine and use X11-forwarding to display the GUI.
Install VcXsrv. Make sure you add the right firewall rules and a subnet mask for the incoming connections. An alternative is to disable access control when you start the XServer but this could have security implications for you. This is a great write-up of all the pitfalls you can encounter.
Key to the XServer forwarding are the extra settings during XServer startup:
Add the following to .bashrc
. Please note that it is similar
but not identical to snippets you\'ll find elsewhere:
export DISPLAY=$(awk '/nameserver / {print $2; exit}' /etc/resolv.conf 2\>/dev/null):0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=0
Please use a recent version of Clang, as installed by brew for example. The project has been confirmed to build and run with Clang 11 on BigSur and Catalina using this line
cmake .. -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin/clang++ \
-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=/usr/local/opt/llvm/bin/clang \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release
This research has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under the Specific Grant Agreement No. 720270 (Human Brain Project SGA1), Specific Grant Agreement No. 785907 (Human Brain Project SGA2), and Specific Grant Agreement No. 945539 (Human Brain Project SGA3).
Arbor GUI is an eBrains project.
This project uses various open source projects, licensed under permissive open source licenses. See the respective projects for license and copyright details.
Test and example datasets include:
dend-C060114A2_axon-C060114A5.asc
copyright of
the BBP, licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
license.The Arbor GUI entry on Zenodo can be cited, see CITATION.bib.