Chapel Prerequisites¶

Chapel is designed to be portable to a variety of systems and only requires software that is common on UNIX systems.

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 a Bourne shell available at /bin/sh and env available at /usr/bin/env.

You have Python 2.7 or newer available as either python3 or python and that env can locate it.

You have access to gmake or a GNU-compatible version of make.

You have access to standard C and C++ compilers.

Building the Chapel compiler and bundled components requires C++14 and one of the following:

GCC 7.1 or newer

Clang 5.0 or newer

Apple Clang 9.3 or newer

C11 support, while not required, will enable faster atomic operations.

CMake is available and cmake runs version 3.13.4 or later.

The LLVM backend is now the default and it is easiest to use it with a system-wide installation of LLVM and clang. On Mac OS X, LLVM 14 and 15 are supported. On other platforms, LLVM and clang versions 11 through 15 are currently supported. If a system-wide installation of LLVM and clang with one of those versions is not available, you can use the bundled LLVM or disable LLVM support (see CHPL_LLVM). LLVM 16 support is avaible with certain configurations. If LLVM 16 is the only system-wide install of LLVM, it will be used by default. Otherwise you can opt-in to it explicitly by setting CHPL_LLVM_CONFIG.

In addition, several optional components have additional requirements:

Python 3.7 or newer is required if you want to use chpldoc, c2chapel, or Chapel’s test system. These additionally require python3-devel or the equivalent package; python3 and pip3 commands; and the venv Python package.

doxygen 1.8.17 or newer is required to build the complete documentation

m4 is required for building the bundled GMP

git is required for Mason, chapel’s package manager

pkg-config is required for the mason system subcommands

cmake 3.16 or newer is required to install chpl when choosing an installation with ./configure --chpl-home=/path/to/install

Installation¶

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

Alma Linux 8, 9.3:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git cmake
sudo dnf install which diffutils
sudo dnf install llvm-devel clang clang-devel

Alpine 3.17 (but note Alpine CHPL_TASKS=qthreads incompatability):

sudo apk add gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make gawk git cmake
sudo apk add llvm-dev clang-dev clang-static llvm-static

Alpine 3.18 (but note Alpine CHPL_TASKS=qthreads incompatability):

sudo apk add gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make gawk git cmake
sudo apk add llvm15-dev clang15-dev llvm15-static clang15-static

Amazon Linux 2:

sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python tcsh bash gcc gcc-c++ perl python python-devel python-setuptools bash make gawk python3 which
sudo yum install wget tar openssl-devel
wget https://github.com/Kitware/CMake/releases/download/v3.25.1/cmake-3.25.1.tar.gz
tar xvzf cmake-3.25.1.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.25.1
./bootstrap
make
sudo make install
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/cmake cmake /usr/local/bin/cmake 1
sudo yum install llvm-devel clang clang-devel

Amazon Linux 2023:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git cmake
sudo dnf install which diffutils
sudo dnf install clang clang-devel llvm-devel

Arch:

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S base-devel
sudo pacman -S cmake git python
sudo pacman -S llvm14 clang14

CentOS 7 Devtoolset 11 (but note CentOS 7 CHPL_LLVM=system incompatability):

sudo yum install centos-release-scl
sudo yum install devtoolset-11-gcc*
sudo yum install epel-release
sudo scl enable devtoolset-11 bash
sudo echo source scl_source enable devtoolset-11 >> ~/.bashrc
sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl tcsh bash gcc gcc-c++ perl python3 bash make gawk cmake3
sudo echo export CMAKE=cmake3 >> ~/.bashrc

CentOS Stream 8, 9:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git cmake
sudo dnf install which diffutils
sudo dnf install llvm-devel-16.0.6 clang-16.0.6 clang-devel-16.0.6

Debian 10 “Buster”:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make mawk git pkg-config cmake
sudo apt-get install llvm-13-dev llvm-13 llvm-13-tools clang-13 libclang-13-dev libclang-cpp13-dev libedit-dev

Debian 12 “Bookworm”, 11 “Bullseye”:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make mawk git pkg-config cmake
sudo apt-get install llvm-dev llvm clang libclang-dev libclang-cpp-dev libedit-dev

Fedora 37, 38, 39, 40 (but note Fedora CHPL_LLVM=system incompatabilities):

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git cmake
sudo dnf install which diffutils
sudo dnf install llvm-devel clang clang-devel

FreeBSD 12.4:

sudo pkg install gcc m4 perl5 python3 bash gmake gawk git pkgconf cmake
sudo pkg install llvm13

FreeBSD 13.2, 14.0:

sudo pkg install gcc m4 perl5 python3 bash gmake gawk git pkgconf cmake
sudo pkg install llvm

OpenSuse Leap 15.4, 15.5:

sudo zypper install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git pkg-config cmake
sudo zypper install llvm-devel clang-devel clang

Rocky Linux 8, 9.3:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python3 python3-devel bash make gawk git cmake
sudo dnf install which diffutils
sudo dnf install llvm-devel clang clang-devel

Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa”:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make mawk git pkg-config cmake
sudo apt-get install llvm-12-dev llvm-12 llvm-12-tools clang-12 libclang-12-dev libclang-cpp12-dev libedit-dev

Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish”, 23.10 “Mantic Minotaur”:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc g++ m4 perl python3 python3-dev bash make mawk git pkg-config cmake
sudo apt-get install llvm-dev llvm clang libclang-dev libclang-cpp-dev libedit-dev

Compatability Notes¶

Alpine CHPL_TASKS=qthreads incompatability¶

Qthreads does not currently build on Alpine, although Chapel does work on Alpine with the quickstart configuration or CHPL_TASKS=fifo.

CentOS 7 CHPL_LLVM=system incompatability¶

CentOS 7 does not include a new enough LLVM release to work with CHPL_LLVM=system. CHPL_LLVM=bundled or CHPL_LLVM=none are available as alternatives.

Fedora CHPL_LLVM=system incompatabilities¶

Fedora only includes a single version of clang. As a result, CHPL_LLVM=system only works on Fedora releases that have a version of clang that Chapel supports. In particular, CHPL_LLVM=system does not work on the newest versions of Fedora. CHPL_LLVM=bundled or CHPL_LLVM=none are available as alternatives.