Unless you really need to build Codon for whatever reason, we strongly recommend using pre-built binaries if possible.

Dependencies

Codon uses an LLVM fork based on LLVM 17. To build it, you can do:

git clone --depth 1 -b codon https://github.com/exaloop/llvm-project
cmake -S llvm-project/llvm -B llvm-project/build -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DLLVM_INCLUDE_TESTS=OFF \
    -DLLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON \
    -DLLVM_ENABLE_ZLIB=OFF \
    -DLLVM_ENABLE_TERMINFO=OFF \
    -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD=all
cmake --build llvm-project/build
cmake --install llvm-project/build --prefix=llvm-project/install

You can also add -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS=clang if you do not have clang installed on your system. We also recommend setting a local prefix during installation to avoid clashes with the system LLVM.

Build

The following can generally be used to build Codon. The build process will automatically download and build several smaller dependencies.

cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DLLVM_DIR=$(llvm-config --cmakedir) \
    -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang \
    -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++
cmake --build build --config Release
cmake --install build --prefix=install

This will produce the codon executable in the install/bin directory, as well as codon_test in the build directory which runs the test suite. Additionally, a number of shared libraries are produced in install/lib/codon:

• libcodonc: The compiler library used by the codon command-line tool.
• libcodonrt: The runtime library used during execution.
• libomp: OpenMP runtime used to execute parallel code.

{% hint style="warning" %} Make sure the llvm-config being used corresponds to Codon's LLVM. You can also use -DLLVM_DIR=llvm-project/install/lib/cmake/llvm on the first cmake command if you followed the instructions above for compiling LLVM. {% endhint %}

GPU support

Add -DCODON_GPU=ON to the first cmake command above to enable GPU support.

Jupyter support

To enable Jupyter support, you will need to build the Jupyter plugin:

# Linux version:
cmake -S jupyter -B jupyter/build \
    -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang \
    -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
    -DLLVM_DIR=$(llvm-config --cmakedir) \
    -DCODON_PATH=install \
    -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$(openssl version -d | cut -d' ' -f2 | tr -d '"') \
    -DOPENSSL_CRYPTO_LIBRARY=/usr/lib64/libssl.so \
    -DXEUS_USE_DYNAMIC_UUID=ON
# n.b. OPENSSL_CRYPTO_LIBRARY might differ on your system.

# On macOS, do this instead:
OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl cmake -S jupyter -B jupyter/build \
    -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang \
    -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
    -DLLVM_DIR=$(llvm-config --cmakedir) \
    -DCODON_PATH=install

# Then:
cmake --build jupyter/build
cmake --install jupyter/build