Installation

Boost.uBlas is a header only library. You only need to include the right headers and take care of the dependencies.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have a C++ compiler that supports C++17 (master) and C++20 (develop)

g++ --version
# g++ (Ubuntu 10.3.0-1ubuntu1~20.04) 10.3.0

or

clang++ --version
# Ubuntu clang version 11.0.0-2~ubuntu20.04.1

For Mac user, the only toolset is clang. Installing gcc with Homebrew is not recommended.

pple clang version 12.0.5 (clang-1205.0.22.11)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin20.6.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

Standalone

uBlas can be compiled without the boost super project

Clone the uBlas project

git clone [email protected]:boostorg/ublas.git
cd ublas

Switch to the master branch

git checkout master # develop or any other feature branch

Make sure you have installed boost library

Try out an example(the following examples are available under develop branch):

cd examples/tensor
g++ -std=c++20 simple_expressions.cpp -I../../include -o simple_expressions
g++ -std=c++20 instantiate_tensor.cpp -I../../include -o instantiate_tensor

With Boost super-project

Clone the Boost super-project

git clone --recursive --jobs 8 https://github.com/boostorg/boost.git

Switch the Boost super-project to desired branch, master or develop

cd boost
git checkout master

TIP: Modular Boost Library Maintenance guide, for more realistic test environment, recommends to develop and test individual Boost library against other Boost libraries as defined by the Boost super-project master branch:

cd boost
git checkout master
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive --jobs 8

Build the b2 driver program for Boost.Build engine.

./bootstrap.sh
./b2 --version

TIP: For more convenient path-less invocation, you can copy the b2 program to a location in your PATH.

Optionally, create full content of /boost virtual directory with all Boost headers linked from the individual modular Boost libraries. If you skip this step, executing b2 to run tests will automatically create the directory with all headers required by Boost.uBLAS and tests.

./b2 -j8 headers

Regardless if you decide to develop again master (recommended) or develop branch of the Boost super-project, you should always base your contributions (i.e. topic branches) on Boost.uBLAS develop branch. Go to the Boost.uBLAS library submodule.

cd libs/numeric/ublas

Checkout the develop branch and bring it up to date

git checkout develop
git branch -vv
git pull origin develop

The b2 invocation explains available options like toolset, variant and others. Execute b2 to run all tests built using default variant=debug and default toolset determined for your development environment. We also use the latest cxxstd=20 for Boost.uBLAS.

b2 is similar to cmake or qmake which is used to build ublas. Refer Documentation for more information.

Build examples of Boost.uBLAS assuming that you are in the boost folder.

cd libs/numeric/ublas
../../../b2 -j8 release toolset=clang cxxstd=20 examples/tensor

Build tests of Boost.uBLAS assuming that you are in the boost folder.

cd libs/numeric/ublas
../../../b2 -j8 release toolset=clang cxxstd=20 test/tensor

For macbook user, just in the there are errors during the build.

cd libs/numeric/ublas
echo "using clang : : clang++ : <cxxflags>"-std=c++20" <linkflags>"-lboost_unit_test_framework" ;" >> ~/user-config.jam
../../../b2 -j8 test/tensor

TIP: If something goes wrong, you end up with incomplete or accidentally modified files in your clone of the super-project repository, or you simply wish to start fresh, then you can clean and reset the whole repository and its modules:

git clean -xfd
git submodule foreach --recursive git clean -xfd
git reset --hard
git submodule foreach --recursive git reset --hard
git submodule update --init --recursive --jobs 8

For running the tests and compiling ublas on your local machine, refer this according to the operating system you have.