Installing Shark ¶

Downloads ¶

We have two source packages available:

Shark-4.0.0.zip

Shark-4.0.0.tar.gz

You can also get the latest snapshot from github:

git clone https://github.com/Shark-ML/Shark/

CMake Options ¶

The cmake file of Shark has several options. See the following table for a list of options. The default values are bold:

Option	Values	Effect
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	Debug/Release	Builds Shark in Debug or Release mode. In debug, the linbrary is called shark_debug
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX	Path /usr/local	Installation path for Shark
BUILD_DOCUMENTATION	ON/OFF	Builds the documentation, see “build documentation”
BUILD_EXAMPLES	ON/OFF	Builds the examples
BUILD_TESTING	ON/OFF	Builds the tests
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS	ON/OFF	Builds Shark as shared library
Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS	ON/OFF	Searches and uses the static boost libraries, Be aware, that linking static Boost libraries to a dynamic Shark can result in problems during build!
BOOST_ROOT	Path	Path to boost, if it is not installed in a default path.
ENABLE_CBLAS	ON/OFF	Searches for a linear algebra library on the system
CBLAS_LIBRARY_PATH	Path /usr/include	Sets the path to the cblas include directory.
CBLAS_INCLUDE_PATH	Path /usr/lib64/	Sets the path to the cblas library directory.
ENABLE_OPENMP	ON/OFF	Enables OpenMP support if supported by the platform
ENABLE_SIMD	ON/OFF	Enables SIMD in linear algebra
ENABLE_OPENCL	ON/OFF	Enables OpenCL support if boost.compute is available. EXPERIMENTAL!
ENABLE_CLBLAST	ON/OFF	Uses CLBLAST as OpenCL linear algebra backend. EXPERIMENTAL!

To change options, either use one of the cmake guis (e.g., ccmake) or add the options to the cmake call. Choosing another path to boost and disabling OpenMP would look like:

cmake "-DBOOST_ROOT=/path/to/boost" "-DENABLE_OPENMP=OFF" ../

An introduction on how to run cmake can be found here.

Linux, MacOS, and other Unix-based systems ¶

Packages ¶

We are supporting packages for the following platforms:

Arch Linux
- current development version downloadable from AUR as packages shark-ml-atlas-git and shark-ml-git for a shark version with and without ATLAS.
More to come!

Installation ¶

On may systems, installing shark is as easy as:

mkdir Shark/build/
cd Shark/build
cmake ../
make

Shark relies on Boost and uses CMake. Furthermore, Shark can make use of different linear algebra libraries. On MacOsX, Accelerate is used by default. On Linux and Windows, ATLAS, CBLAS and openblas is used if available. Under Ubuntu, you install all required packages by:

sudo apt-get install cmake cmake-curses-gui libatlas-base-dev libboost-all-dev

Under MacOS using MacPorts, you get the required packages by:

sudo port install boost cmake

Building the documentation ¶

This section will tell you how to build the documentation on your computer, and also how to first install the tools needed for it. Besides Doxygen, we rely on two relevant Python modules, namely Sphinx and Doxylink (aka sphinxcontrib-doxylink). Since this tutorial page is created by Sphinx, you will most likely read it off a webserver or as part of a Shark package including the generated documentation pages. After having built the documentation yourself, you will be able to read it from your local folder, too.

Make sure Doxygen, Graphviz, Python and Sphinx are properly installed on your system,
run cmake in your build directory and set BUILD_DOCUMENTATION to ON
run make doc

Windows and Visual Studio ¶

Dependencies ¶

First start by download and installing:

CMake
The most recent boost binaries

Setting Up Boost ¶

For simplicity, we assume that you installed boost in C:\locale\boost_1.59\. The boost libraries will be located in a subfolder whose name depends on your compiler (e.g. C:\locale\boost_1.59\lib64-msvc-12.0). Next, you need to tell Windows about the location of the binaries as otherwise compilation will work, but running the compiled binaries will not be possible.

For this you go to My Computer>Properties>Advanced>Environment Variables>System Variables>Path>Edit>Variable Value and add ;C:\locale\boost_1.59\lib64-msvc-12.0 (or your equivalent path) to the end.

Installing Shark ¶

Download the sources and unpack them
Open the CMake GUI
Next to “Where is the source code” set the path to the unpacked Shark location
Next to “Where to build the directory” set the path to where you want the Visual Studio project files to be
Click on “Add Entry”
Add an Entry BOOST_ROOT of type PATH and set it to your boost intall directory (e.g. C:\locale\boost_1.59)
Add an Entry BOOST_LIBRARYDIR of type PATH and set it to your boost library directory (e.g. C:\locale\boost_1.59\lib64-msvc-12.0)
Set the right Visual Studio compiler and click on Configure (possibly twice) and then on generate

Troubleshooting the installation procedure ¶

Getting Shark to find Boost ¶

If you obtained Boost through your package manager, Shark should (in theory) be able to find Boost automatically. If Boost is not found automatically (e.g., after issuing make the compilation aborts with long error messages involving the word “boost”; or the Makefile cannot even be generated because the Shark CMake configuration does not complete), also possibly because you compiled/installed Boost yourself to some custom location, you can try the following:

The most proven approach is to invoke CMake with the additional options -DBoost_NO_SYSTEM_PATHS=TRUE -DBOOST_INCLUDEDIR=/path/to/boost/include/ -DBOOST_LIBRARYDIR=/path/to/boost/lib/. Here, DBOOST_LIBRARYDIR could for example be /opt/local/include or /home/user/mine/boost_153/lib, etc. This should work in 90% of all cases.