Build environment setup for CMake
Warning
CatBoost uses CMake-based build process since this commit. Previously Ya Make (Yandex's build system) had been used.
For building CatBoost using Ya Make see here
Later in this document $CATBOOST_SRC_ROOT refers to the root dir of the local working copy of the source code cloned from the GitHub CatBoost repository.
Host platform refers to the operating system and CPU architecture you run build on.
Target platform refers to the operating system and CPU architecture you run build for (where you intend to run built artifacts like executable CLI application, dynamic library, Python extension library etc.)
Possible host and target platform combinations:
| Host platform | Target platform |
|---|---|
| Linux x86_64 | Linux or Android |
| Linux non x86_64 | Linux |
| macOS x86_64 or arm64 | macOS x86_64 or arm64 or universal binaries |
| Windows x86_64 | Windows x86_64 |
Native artifacts build requirements
Python interpreter
Python 3.x interpreter. Python is used in some auxiliary scripts and conan package manager uses it.
For revisions before 98df6bf python had to have six package installed.
CMake
Version 3.24+
Before commit 21a3f85:
| Condition | Minimum version |
|---|---|
| Target OS is Windows, build without CUDA support | 3.24 |
| Target OS is Windows, build with CUDA support | 3.21 |
| Target OS is Android | 3.21 |
| CUDA support, target OS is not Windows | 3.18 |
| None of the above | 3.15 |
Android NDK (only for Android target platform)
Compilers, linkers and related tools
Depending on host OS:
gcccompiler, not used to compile CatBoost code itself but used to build dependencies as Conan packages.clangcompiler, version 14+ and version 13+ as a CUDA host compiler if you want to build with CUDA support.lldlinker, version 7+
For Linux target the default CMake toolchain assumes that clang and clang++ are available from the command line and will use them to compile CatBoost components. If the default version of clang and clang++ is not what is intended to be used for building then modify the toolchain file $CATBOOST_SRC_ROOT/build/toolchains/clang.toolchain - replace all occurences of clang and clang++ with clang-$CLANG_VERSION and clang++-$CLANG_VERSION respectively where $CLANG_VERSION is the version of clang you want to use like, for example, 16 or 17 (must be already installed).
For compilation with CUDA support the default CMake toolchain assumes that clang-14 is available from the command line.
For revisions before 2347554 the minimal supported clang as a CUDA host compiler version has been 12.
For revisions before 136f14f the minimal supported clang version has been 12.
Android target uses its own CMake toolchain and compiler tools specified there are all provided by the NDK.
- XCode command line tools (must contain
clangwith version 14+, so XCode version must be greater than 14.0 as well)
For revisions before 136f14f the minimal supported clang version has been 12 (means XCode version must have been 12.0+ as well).
-
Windows 10 or Windows 11 SDK (usually installed as a part of the Microsoft Visual Studio setup)
-
for builds without CUDA support:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 with
clang-clcompiler with version 14+ installed (can be selected inIndividual componentspane of the Visual Studio Installer for Visual Studio 2022). See details here
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 with
-
for builds with CUDA support:
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 or 2022 with MSVC v142 - C++ x64/x86 build tools version v14.28 - 16.x or v14.29 - 16.x (can be selected in
Individual componentspane of the Visual Studio Installer for a paricular Visual Studio version)
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 or 2022 with MSVC v142 - C++ x64/x86 build tools version v14.28 - 16.x or v14.29 - 16.x (can be selected in
For revisions before d5ac776 builds without CUDA have also been using MSVC v142 - Visual Studio 2019 C++ x64/x86 build tools version v14.28 - 16.8 or v14.28 - 16.9.
For revisions before between d5ac776 and 136f14f for builds without CUDA support the minimum supported clang-cl version has been 12 (so, Visual Studio 2019 that includes it has also been supported).
CUDA toolkit (only if CUDA support is needed)
Supported only for Linux and Windows host and target platforms.
CUDA toolkit needs to be installed.
CUDA version 11.8 is supported by default (because it contains the biggest set of supported target CUDA compute architectures).
Other CUDA versions (11.4 - 12.2) can also be used but require changing target compute architecture options in affected CMake targets.
CUDA 12.3+ support is in progress: GitHub issue #2755.
For revisions before 45cc2e1 the minimal supported CUDA version has been 11.0 .
Conan
Version 2.4.1+.
For revisions before 21a3f85 versions 1.57.0 - 1.62.0 are supported and version 1.62.0 is required if you use python 3.12+.
Used for some dependencies.
conan command should be available from the command line.
Make sure that the path to Conan cache does not contain spaces, this causes issues with some projects. Default cache location can be overridden by specifying CONAN_USER_HOME environment variable
Build system for CMake
Ninja is the preferred build system for CMake.
ninja command should be available from the command line.
Alternatively, on Windows you could also use Visual Studio generators for CMake.
- For builds with CUDA use
Visual Studio 16 2019orVisual Studio 17 2022generator and also specify the required toolset version when calling CMake by adding-T version=<toolset_version>to the command line. Currently supported toolset versions are14.28and14.29. - For builds without CUDA use
Visual Studio 17 2022generator and also specify the requiredClangCLtoolset when calling CMake by adding-T ClangCLto the command line.
Unix Makefiles CMake generator usage on macOS and Linux is possible but not recommended because of some issues with properly taking dependencies into account.
JDK (only for components with JVM API)
You have to install JDK to build components with JVM API (JVM applier and CatBoost for Apache Spark).
JDK version has to be 8+ for JVM applier or strictly 8 for CatBoost for Apache Spark.
Set JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the path of JDK installation to be used during build.
Python development artifacts (only for Python package)
You have to install Python development artifacts (Python headers in an include directory and Python library for building modules).
Note that they are specific to CPython Python implementation. CatBoost does not currently support other Python implementations like PyPy, Jython or IronPython.
One convenient way to install different Python versions with development artifacts in one step is to use pyenv (and its variant for Windows - pyenv-win)