Installation

cppyy requires a (modern) C++ compiler. When installing through conda-forge, conda will install the compiler for you, to match the other conda-forge packages. When using pip and the wheels from PyPI, you minimally need gcc5, clang5, or MSVC’17.

Note

On Windows, a command prompt from which to run Python (or Python run directly) needs to be opened from within an environment with MSVC setup, otherwise the compiler will not be accessible.

When installing from source, the only requirement is a compiler that supports C++14, this in order to build LLVM.

With CPython on Linux or MacOS, probably by far the easiest way to install cppyy, is through conda-forge on Anaconda (or miniconda). A Windows recipe for conda is not available yet, but is forthcoming, so use pip for that platform for now (see below). PyPI always has the authoritative releases (conda-forge pulls the sources from there), so conda-forge may sometimes lag PyPI. If you absolutely need the latest release, use PyPI or consider building from source.

To install using conda, create and/or activate your (new) work environment and install from the conda-forge channel:

$ conda create -n WORK
$ conda activate WORK
(WORK) $ conda install -c conda-forge cppyy
(WORK) [current compiler] $

To install with pip through PyPI, use venv. The use of virtual environment (venv) prevents pollution of any system directories and allows you to wipe out the full installation simply by removing the virtual environment (venv) created directory (“WORK” in this example):

$ python -m venv WORK
$ WORK\Scripts\activate
(WORK) $ python -m pip install cppyy
(WORK) $

Note

If you are using python version less than 3.3, you should use virtualenv instead of venv. First install virtualenv package that allows you to create virtual environment.

$ python -m pip install virtualenv

$ virtualenv WORK

$ source WORK/bin/activate

(WORK) $ python -m pip install cppyy

(WORK) $

If you use the --user option to pip and use pip directly on the command line, instead of through python, make sure that the PATH envar points to the bin directory that will contain the installed entry points during the installation, as the build process needs them. You may also need to install wheel first if you have an older version of pip and/or do not use virtualenv (which installs wheel by default). Example:

$ python -m pip install wheel --user
$ PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH python -m pip install cppyy --user

Wheels on PyPI

Wheels for the backend (cppyy-cling) are available on PyPI for GNU/Linux, MacOS-X, and MS Windows (both 32b and 64b). The Linux wheels are built for manylinux2014, but with the dual ABI enabled. The wheels for MS Windows were build with MSVC Community Edition 2017.

There are no wheels for the CPyCppyy and cppyy packages, to allow the C++ standard chosen to match the local compiler.

pip with conda

Although installing cppyy through conda-forge is recommended, it is possible to build/install with pip under Anaconda/miniconda.

Typical Python extensions only expose a C interface for use through the Python C-API, requiring only calling conventions (and the Python C-API version, of course) to match to be binary compatible. Here, cppyy differs because it exposes C++ APIs: it thus requires a C++ run-time that is ABI compatible with the C++ compiler that was used during build-time.

A set of modern compilers is available through conda-forge, but are only intended for use with conda-build. In particular, the corresponding run-time is installed (for use through rpath when building), but not set up. That is, the conda compilers are added to PATH but not their libraries to LD_LIBRARY_PATH (Mac, Linux; PATH for both on MS Windows). Thus, you get the conda compilers and your system libraries mixed in the same build environment, unless you set LD_LIBRARY_PATH (PATH on Windows) explicitly, e.g. by adding $CONDA_PREFIX/lib. Note that the conda documentation recommends against this. Furthermore, the compilers from conda-forge are not vanilla distributions: header files have been modified, which can can lead to parsing problems if your system C library does not support C11, for example.

Nevertheless, with the above caveats, if your system C/C++ run-times are new enough, the following can be made to work:

$ conda create -n WORK
$ conda activate WORK
(WORK) $ conda install python
(WORK) $ conda install -c conda-forge compilers
(WORK) [current compiler] $ python -m pip install cppyy

C++ standard with pip

The C++20 standard is the default on all systems as of release 3.0.1 (both PyPI and conda-forge); it is C++17 for older releases. When installing from PyPI using pip, you can control the standard selection by setting the STDCXX envar to ‘20’, ‘17’, or ‘14’ (for Linux, the backend does not need to be recompiled) for the 3.x releases; ‘17’, ‘14’, or ‘11’ for the 2.x releases. Note that the build will automatically lower your choice if the compiler used does not support a newer standard.

Install from source

To build an existing release from source, tell pip to not download any binary wheels. Build-time only dependencies are cmake (for general build), python (obviously, but also for LLVM), and a modern C++ compiler (one that supports at least C++14). Use the envar STDCXX to control the C++ standard version; MAKE to change the make command, MAKE_NPROCS to control the maximum number of parallel jobs allowed, and VERBOSE=1 to see full build/compile commands. Example (using --verbose to see pip progress):

$ STDCXX=17 MAKE_NPROCS=32 pip install --verbose cppyy --no-binary=cppyy-cling

Compilation of the backend, which contains a customized version of Clang/LLVM, can take a long time, so by default the setup script will use all cores (x2 if hyperthreading is enabled). Once built, however, the wheel of cppyy-cling is reused by pip for all versions of CPython and for PyPy, thus the long compilation is needed only once for all different versions of Python on the same machine.

See the section on repos for more details/options.

PyPy

PyPy 5.7 and 5.8 have a built-in module cppyy. You can still install the cppyy package, but the built-in module takes precedence. To use cppyy, first import a compatibility module:

$ pypy
[PyPy 5.8.0 with GCC 5.4.0] on linux2
>>>> import cppyy_compat, cppyy
>>>>

You may have to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately if you get an EnvironmentError (it will indicate the needed directory).

Note that your python interpreter (whether CPython or pypy-c) may not have been linked by the C++ compiler. This can lead to problems during loading of C++ libraries and program shutdown. In that case, re-linking is highly recommended.

Very old versions of PyPy (5.6.0 and earlier) have a built-in cppyy based on Reflex, which is less feature-rich and no longer supported. However, both the distribution utilities and user-facing Python codes are very backwards compatible, making migration straightforward.

Precompiled header

For performance reasons (reduced memory and CPU usage), a precompiled header (PCH) of the system and compiler header files will be installed or, failing that, generated on startup. Obviously, this PCH is not portable and should not be part of any wheel.

Some compiler features, such as AVX, OpenMP, fast math, etc. need to be active during compilation of the PCH, as they depend both on compiler flags and system headers (for intrinsics, or API calls). You can control compiler flags through the EXTRA_CLING_ARGS envar and thus what is active in the PCH. In principle, you can also change the C++ language standard by setting the appropriate flag on EXTRA_CLING_ARGS and rebuilding the PCH. However, if done at this stage, that disables some automatic conversion for C++ types that were introduced after C++11 (such as string_view and optional).

If you want multiple PCHs living side-by-side, you can generate them yourself (note that the given path must be absolute):

>>> import cppyy_backend.loader as l
>>> l.set_cling_compile_options(True)         # adds defaults to EXTRA_CLING_ARGS
>>> install_path = '/full/path/to/target/location/for/PCH'
>>> l.ensure_precompiled_header(install_path)

You can then select the appropriate PCH with the CLING_STANDARD_PCH envar:

$ export CLING_STANDARD_PCH=/full/path/to/target/location/for/PCH/allDict.cxx.pch

Or disable it completely by setting that envar to “none”.

Note

Without the PCH, the default C++ standard will be the one with which cppyy-cling was built.