GrPPI  1.0
Generic and Reusable Parallel Pattern Interface
Install Notes

Building the GrPPI library

GrPPI is a header-only library. Consequently, no build process is required for the library itself.

However, GrPPI includes CMake scripts for supporting the following actions:

  • Building the unit tests.
  • Performing coverage analysis on unit tests.
  • Generating the doxygen based documentation.
  • Building the sample programs.
  • Installing the library in your system

To setup the build scripts we recommend that you create an out-of-source directory under the GrPPI root directory:

mkdir build
cd build

Then, you may generate the scripts by just doing:

cmake ..

Finally, you launch the build process with:

make

Building the unit tests

To build the unit tests, you need to set configuration variable GRPPI_UNIT_TEST_ENABLE to ON. You can do so be using the CMake GUI or by typing:

cmake .. -DGRPPI_UNIT_TEST_ENABLE=ON

Then, you can build the unit tests by typing:

make

Control of back-ends

GrPPI offers multiple back-ends:

  • Sequential: Always enabled.
  • Native: Always enabled.
  • OpenMP: Can be enabled/disabled.
  • Intel TBB: Can be enabled/disabled.
  • FastFlow: Can be enabled/disabled.

You may want to disable specific back ends. GrPPI offers specific variables to control this issue:

  • GRPPI_OMP_ENABLE: Enable/disable OpenMP back-end.
  • GRPPI_TBB_ENABLE: Enable/disable TBB back-end.
  • GRPPI_FF_ENABLE: Entable/disable FastFlow back-end.

OpenMP back-end

The OpenMP back-end is controlled by CMake option GRPPI_OMP_ENABLE (values can be ON or OFF). You can enable/disable this back-end with this option.

GrPPI uses CMake's FindOpenMP to detect if your compiler supports OpenMP. In case your compiler supports OpenMP GRPPI_OMP_ENABLE will default to ON. If your compiler does not support OpenMP any attempt to enable GrPPI/OpenMP back-end will be ignored.

If you have and OpenMP compliant compiler and GrPPI refuses to enable the OpenMP back-end, please, open an issue providing details.

Intel TBB back-end

The Intel TBB back-end is controlled by CMake option GRPPI_TBB_ENABLE (values can be ON or OFF). You can enable/disable this back-end with this option.

GrPPI tries to detect if your system has Intel TBB installed. In case, Intel TBB is found GRPPI_TBB_ENABLE will default to ON. If Intel TBB is not found, any attempt to enable GrPPI/TBB back-end will be ignored.

Please refer to (Additional Libraries)[#additional-libraries] for details on Intel TBB install.

If you have installed Intel TBB and GrPPI refuses to enable the TBB back-end, please, open an issue providing details.

FastFlow back-end

The FastFlow back-end is controlled by CMake option GRPPI_FF_ENABLE (values can be ON or OFF). You can enable/disable this back-end with this option.

GrPPI tries to detect if your system has FastFlow installed. In case, FastFlow is found GRPPI_TBB_ENABLE will default to ON. If FastFlow is not found, any attempt to enable GrPPI/FF back-end will be ignored.

Please refer to (Additional Libraries)[#additional-libraries] for details on Intel TBB install.

If you have installed FastFlow and GrPPI refuses to enable the FastFlow back-end, please, open an issue providing details.

Running the unit tests

To run all the unit tests you can do:

make test

or alternatively:

ctest

Performing coverage analysis

To perform a coverage analysis type:

make coverage

The coverage HTML reports are generated under unit_tests/mycov/index.html.

Documentation generation

Documentation generation is disabled by default. However, if you wish to build the documentation yourself, you may enable the option:

cmake .. -DGRPPI_DOXY_ENABLE=ON
make

This will generate a doc directory under your build tree with the generated documentation.

Note: You will need a doxygen in your system to make use of this option. You will also need graphviz.

Building the sample programs

GrPPI includes a number of example programs under directory samples. To build all samples you may use:

cmake .. -DGRPPI_EXAMPLE_APPLICATIONS_ENABLE=ON
make

Installing GrPPI

If you want to install GrPPI in your system, it will be installed using as base path the directory defined by CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX. You do not need to do anything special if you want to install in the default location.

sudo make install

On many Linux systems, this will install the header files under /usr/local/include/grppi.

You can specify a different install directory to CMake:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=path/to/folder
make install

Supported Compilers

For using GrPPI you need a C++14 compliant compiler.

GrPPI has been tested with the following compilers:

  • g++ 6.3, 7.2.
  • clang++ 3.9, 4.0, 5.0.

If you want to use a different compiler than the default one, you can specify it by doing:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-4.0
make

Required Libraries

No external library is strictly required for basic GrPPI use. It only hard dependency is the C++ standard library.

Additional Libraries

In order to use the Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB) back-end you need to install the following library:

In order to use the FastFlow back-end you need to install it. You can obtain a recent version from:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Current version of fastflow has two minor issues. Until this is fixed you can get this fork

Unit tests and coverage analysis

For unit testing GrPPI uses the GoogleTest framework.

You can obtain Get it from:

If you want to run unit tests and perform coverage analysis you will need:

  • lcov To generate gcov HTML reports.
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