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 3.5 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++17 and one of the following:

      • GCC 7.4 or newer

      • Clang 5.0 or newer

      • Apple Clang 10.0 or newer

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

  • CMake is available and cmake runs version 3.20 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 through 19 are currently supported. On other platforms, LLVM and clang versions 11 through 19 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).

  • When using the LLVM installation bundled with Chapel (CHPL_LLVM=bundled), make sure your machine has at least 4GB of memory available before building Chapel. If you are using your system’s LLVM (CHPL_LLVM=system), Chapel can be built with at least 2GB of memory. See CHPL_LLVM for more information about these settings. Note that the memory requirements for building Chapel may vary in other configurations or for parallel builds.

In addition, several optional components have additional requirements:

  • Python 3.9 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

Installation

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

  • Alma Linux 8, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5:

    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:

    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, 3.19:

    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

  • Alpine 3.20:

    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

  • Amazon Linux 2 (but note Amazon Linux 2 CHPL_LLVM!=system incompatibility):

    sudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ m4 perl python tcsh bash 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 Stream 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 clang clang-devel

  • Debian 10 “Buster” (but note Newer CMake required to build LLVM):

    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 11 “Bullseye” (but note Newer CMake required to build LLVM):

    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

  • Debian 12 “Bookworm”:

    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 39, 40 (but note Fedora CHPL_LLVM=system incompatibilities):

    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 13.3, 13.4, 14.0, 14.1:

    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, 8.10, 9.3, 9.4:

    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” (but note Newer CMake required to build LLVM):

    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”, 24.04 “Noble Numbat”, 24.10 “Oracular Oriole”:

    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

Compatibility Notes

Amazon Linux 2 CHPL_LLVM!=system incompatibility

Amazon Linux 2 uses GCC 7.3.1 but GCC 7.4 or newer is required to build LLVM. Chapel can use a system-wide install of LLVM on this platform, so installing the LLVM packages as shown above and using CHPL_LLVM=system is the recommended workaround.

CentOS 7 CHPL_LLVM=system incompatibility

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.

Newer CMake required to build LLVM

On some systems, the cmake package is not new enough to build the bundled LLVM. That can be addressed either by installing CMake from source or by installing a system LLVM package using the commands shown above.

Note that the LLVM support library is used even with CHPL_LLVM=none, and so installing a system LLVM on these platforms is still important in that case.

Fedora CHPL_LLVM=system incompatibilities

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 might not work on the newest versions of Fedora. CHPL_LLVM=bundled or CHPL_LLVM=none are available as alternatives.