QUCS - Quite Universal Circuit Simulator

Qucs is an integrated circuit simulator which means you are able to setup a circuit with a graphical user interface (GUI) and simulate the large-signal, small-signal and noise behaviour of the circuit. After that simulation has finished you can view the simulation results on a presentation page or window.

Resources

• Website: http://qucs.sourceforge.net/
• Main repository: http://sourceforge.net/p/qucs/git/
• Mirror repository: https://github.com/Qucs/qucs
• Mailing lists: http://sourceforge.net/p/qucs/mailman/
• Forum: http://sourceforge.net/p/qucs/discussion/
• Bug trackers:
  • http://sourceforge.net/p/qucs/_list/tickets
  • https://github.com/Qucs/qucs/issues
• Source code documentation:
  • http://qucs.github.io/qucs-doxygen/qucs/index.html
  • http://qucs.github.io/qucs-doxygen/qucs-core/index.html
• Downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/files/
• Translation platform: https://www.transifex.com/qucs/public/

Currently Supported Platforms

• GNU/Linux
• Darwin/OS X
• FreeBSD
• Windows

Branching strategy for the Git repository

After release 0.0.18 the project started to use the Git flow strategy for branching http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/.

Under this strategy the following branches can be found in the repository:

• master: contains the latest stable release.
• develop: contains the latest developments or unstable. This should be the base branch of Pull-Requests or contributions.
• release-x.y.z: are temporary branches being stabilized for a release. To be merged into master and removed.
• [other branches]: are branches with a good reason to be in the main repository (ease collaboration, use CI facilities).

Source Download and Compilation

The source code is available as distribution tarballs and clones of the Git repository.

The distributed tarballs can be downloaded from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/files/qucs/. Compilation and install from tarball is expected to work as follows (see dependencies below):

tar xvfz qucs[version].tar.gz
cd qucs[version]
./configure
make install

All versions of the code may be accessed by cloning one of the Git repositories (the first is updated more frequently):

git clone git://github.com/Qucs/qucs.git
git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/qucs/git

For test and development qucs-test is provided as a Git submodule. To download the submodule either:

• clone submodules recursively:
  • git clone --recursive [repository]
• or after cloning, do:
  • git submodule init
  • git submodule update

After an initial clone operation, the local copy is set by the default as the master branch. Branches can be listed and selected with the following commands:

git branch
git checkout [branch name]

Compilation and installation depends on the operation system. See below for an example.

Contributing to QUCS

Some general contribution guidelines can be found on our Wiki https://github.com/Qucs/qucs/wiki/Contribution.

Compile instructions Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

For the GUI tools and simulation engine the following dependencies are needed:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libqt4-qt3support
sudo apt-get install automake libtool libtool-bin gperf flex bison

The ADMS package is necessary. Please download the latest tarball and follow the install instructions. Having admsXml on the path should be sufficient.

To build the manuals and user documentation further dependencies are needed. Please check the qucs-doc/README file. See below the --disable-doc to skip building the documentation from source. To build the documentation from source the following dependencies are needed:

sudo apt-get install doxygen
sudo apt-get install octave octave-epstk
sudo apt-get install latex2html
sudo apt-get install texlive texlive-font-utils texlive-math-extra
sudo apt-get install texlive-publishers texlive-science
sudo apt-get install transfig gnuplot graphviz
sudo apt-get install ps2eps pgf python-tk

Bootstrap and build everything (after cloning):

cd qucs
./bootstrap
./configure
make
sudo make install

Compile Qucs GUI tools only:

cd qucs
[./bootstrap] #if not executed in the top level
./configure
make
sudo make install

Compile qucs-core tools only:

cd qucs-core
[./bootstrap] #if not executed in the top level
./configure
make
sudo make install

Compile qucs-doc documentation only:

cd qucs-doc
[./bootstrap] #if not executed in the top level
./configure
make
sudo make install

Testing can be executed at the top level with:

make check

Note:

• Qucs will be installed to /usr/local by default. You may override this by passing --prefix=[some location] to the ./configure script.

• ADMS should be installed e.g. from a released tarball (>= 2.3.0). To use a different admsXml pass the option --with-admsxml=[path/to/]anotherAdmsXml to ./configure.

• The LaTex documentation compilation in qucs-doc can be skipped passing --disable-doc to the top level configure script.

• Consider the output of ./configure --help for more and definitive build options.

Binary Installation

Some of the platform specific pre-compile binary packages containing installers can be found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/qucs/files/qucs-binary/.

License

Qucs is under GNU General Public License, version 2.0+. See COPYING file.