The deal.II Development Page
Author: the deal.II authors <authors@dealii.org>
Keywords: deal dealii finite elements fem triangulation
Date: $Date: 2013-12-04 06:12:46 -0500 (Wed, 04 Dec 2013) $

# Information for Users

This page gathers some information on developing programs based on deal.II, as well as on how to configure and use deal.II. At present, we have the following resources available:

## Documentation

- deal.II CMake documentation: This page provides extensive information about configuration and installation with the CMake build system.

- Using CMake and deal.II in a user project: This page covers how to use CMake in your own project. An overview of how to retrieve necessary information from a deal.II installation as well as how to write a `CMakeLists.txt` for a client project is given.

- Linking your online documentation to the deal.II online manual: After spending a lot of time writing good documentation for your code and putting it online, here we explain how to put links to the deal.II online manual into your documentation, so that readers can click through.

- Bugs: Though well tested, deal.II certainly has bugs. If you want to report a bug (or enhancement request), go to the bug tracking system and enter a new ticket for your issue.

## Tutorials

The tutorial is for new users of the library. It explains the basic elements of finite element programs based on the library, and provides small example programs. You can also reach the tutorial link from the menu bar at the left. There is also an extensive set of Youtube-hosted video lectures that provide both the context of the mathematical and computational methods of deal.II as well as demonstrate parts of the tutorial. These video lectures are also reachable from the menu bar at the left.

As all other documentation, the HTML pages of the tutorials can be generated locally on your computer and can then be read offline. Please follow the instructions in the ReadMe on how to generate them locally.

## Programming interface

The programming interface/manual pages are what you will need most often as a reference of all classes, functions and variables in the library. They are extensively documented (presently more than 5000 pages if printed), and generated by Doxygen. There is also a quick link to these pages from the menu bar at the left.

The documentation uses many of the features of Doxygen. In particular, the link takes you straight to a page that lists modules, a way to group classes with similar purposes. This may be what you are probably interested in when you are not yet familiar with the library. If you already know your way around and want to look up the signature of a particular member function, for example, you may go to the class view or choose any of the other ways in which Doxygen allows you to navigate through the documentation.

Just as for the tutorials, the API docs need to be generated first, if you download deal.II. Please follow the instructions in the ReadMe on how to do this.