Using Chapel on Windows

Chapel can be used on Windows systems in two ways: via the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) or via Cygwin. The WSL approach is the preferred method for running Chapel on Windows, as it provides a more native Linux environment and better performance. The Cygwin approach is supported as a portability option and should not be expected to result in good performance.

Using Chapel on WSL

WSL is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows. It provides a Linux-compatible kernel interface, and it can run a variety of Linux distributions. For more information on WSL, see the WSL documentation.

To use Chapel on WSL, you will need to install a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Store. We recommend using Ubuntu, but others will likely work. Once you have installed your distribution, get the list of prerequisites from Chapel Prerequisites and install Chapel as you would on a native Linux system. There are no platform-specific settings for Chapel on WSL at this time.

Note

This configuration is not currently tested nightly. Please report any issues you encounter when using Chapel on WSL by filing a bug report

Using Chapel on Cygwin

Chapel can be used on both 32-bit and 64-bit installations of Cygwin. Chapel can be sensitive to directories with spaces, but otherwise it will work on Cygwin just like any other platform.

Note

Please note that running Chapel on Cygwin is supported only as a portability option and should not be expected to result in good performance. For users wanting to run Chapel on Windows systems, the preferred approach is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) / Linux Bash Shell.

Unpacking Chapel

For best results, avoid using WinZip to unpack the release, or make sure that it is running in a mode that will not convert textfiles to use Windows-style carriage-return/linefeed end-of-lines – doing so can change Makefiles such that they break the build process. We recommend using Cygwin’s gunzip and tar utilities to unpack the release:

gunzip chapel.tar.gz
tar xvf chapel.tar

It is best to unpack the release in a directory whose path contains no spaces. For example, unpacking the release in the root directory of your hard-drive (/cygdrive/c/) to create /cygdrive/c/chapel tends to work well. Currently, our compiler-generated Makefiles break when the compiler or runtime use an absolute path that contains spaces. If any Cygwin experts have tips on addressing this issue in a portable way, please let us know.

Required Packages

In order to get the required tools listed in Chapel Prerequisites, Cygwin users will need to ensure that the following packages are installed in addition to the standard set of Cygwin packages:

Devel

  • gcc and gcc-g++

  • make

Perl

  • perl

Python

  • python

Utils

  • diffutils

Additional Information

For more information on Cygwin, please refer to: