Chapel Prerequisites

If you have a standard UNIX environment, a C/C++ compiler, some basic scripting languages, a GNU-compatible make, and awk installed you should have no problems getting started with Chapel.

Prerequisites

In slightly more detail, the following are prerequisites and assumptions about your environment for using Chapel:

  • You are using an environment that supports standard UNIX commands such as: cd, mkdir, rm, echo
  • You have the Bourne shell available at /bin/sh, the C-shell available at /bin/csh, 'env' available at /usr/bin/env, and that 'env' can locate Perl and Python on your system.
  • You have access to gmake or a GNU-compatible version of make.
  • You have access to standard C and C++ compilers. We test our code using a range of compilers on a nightly basis; these include relatively recent versions of gcc/g++, clang, and compilers from Allinea, Cray, Intel, and PGI.
    • Note that you will need a C++11 compiler to build LLVM or regular expression support (i.e. CHPL_LLVM=llvm or CHPL_REGEXP=re2). If GCC is used, we recommend GCC version 5 or newer for this purpose.
  • Building GMP requires an M4 macro processor.
  • Building LLVM requires cmake version 3.4.3 or later.
  • If you wish to use chpldoc or Chapel's test system, curl and python-devel (or equivalent packages for your platform) are required.
  • If you wish to use Mason, chapel's package manager, git is required.
    • The mason system subcommands additionally require pkg-config.

Installation

We have used the following commands to install the above prerequisites:

  • CentOS:

    sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python python-devel python-setuptools bash make gawk git

  • Fedora:

    sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python python-devel python-setuptools bash make gawk git

  • SLES, openSUSE:

    sudo zypper install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python python-devel python-setuptools bash make gawk git

  • Debian, Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get install gcc g++ m4 perl python python-dev python-setuptools bash make mawk git pkg-config

  • FreeBSD:

    sudo pkg install gcc m4 perl5 python py27-setuptools bash gmake gawk git pkgconf