Compiling on Windows with Visual Studio 2015

Engineering NuPIC
1

First post!

I have been trying to compile the master branch of nupic.core on Windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015. I tried to follow the steps outlined the readme.

Here is a list of the things I needed to do:

  1. Make sure python 2.7 is in PATH env. I have had python 3.5 and I think that caused some issues when running cmake
  2. Install numpy by using the command: “pip install numpy==1.12.1”
  3. Make sure the “patch” command is in PATH

I then run cmake as described in the readme. The output is here

In Visual Studio, when running “ALL_BUILD” in Release configuration I get the output

A few things I have noticed are:

  1. LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file ‘C:/Users/chhenning/Numenta/nupic.core/build/scripts/ThirdParty/Build/YamlStaticLib/yaml.lib’

    -> I fixed it by copying the lib file into the correct folder

  2. LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file ‘C:/Users/chhenning/Numenta/nupic.core/build/scripts/ThirdParty/Install/YamlCppStaticLib/lib/yaml-cpp.lib’

    -> I renamed from “libyaml-cppmd.lib” to “libyaml-cpp.lib”. Is that a debug lib?

  3. LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file ‘$<TARGET_FILE:nupic_core_solo>’
    -> Not sure what to about it.

There are many compiler errors and even ICE’s (Internal Compiler Errors). For instance:

------ Build started: Project: nupic_core_solo, Configuration: Release x64 ------
Cell.cpp
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(170): error C2876: ‘nupic::Serializable’: not all overloads are accessible
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(93): note: see declaration of ‘nupic::Serializable’
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(181): error C2876: ‘nupic::Serializable’: not all overloads are accessible
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(93): note: see declaration of ‘nupic::Serializable’
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(365): warning C4838: conversion from ‘double’ to ‘const nupic::Real’ requires a narrowing conversion
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(862): error C2876: ‘nupic::Serializable’: not all overloads are accessible
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(383): note: see declaration of ‘nupic::Serializable’
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(884): error C2876: ‘nupic::Serializable’: not all overloads are accessible
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Segment.hpp(383): note: see declaration of ‘nupic::Serializable’
C:\Users\chhenning\Numenta\nupic.core\src\nupic/algorithms/Cell.hpp(258): error C2876: ‘nupic::Serializable’: not all overloads are accessible
…

My questions are.

  1. Can nupic.core be compiled on Windows using Visual Studio?

  2. Is there interest in having a working Visual Studio solution that contains all of nupic.core source code? I think most of the compiler errors can be fixed quite easily.

Thanks,
Christian

2

Thanks for your efforts, Christian. I’m not sure if anyone is actively compiling nupic.core in VS at this point. I know no one at Numenta is doing this. But there has been interest in the past.

If anyone else is working on this, or interested in helping, please post here!

3

Hi Matt,

thanks for your answer.

I have created a github repo which contains the nupic c++ source code. My first goals are to have the nupic library compile and to have the tests run through.

Quick, question there is some c++ code which needs fixing in Visual Studio 2017. Would your team be interested in incorporating those changes? I can go into more detail in a follow up email.

Regards,
Christian

4

It depends on how extensive and complicated the changes are. If this is a simple PR that doesn’t break our pipelines, I’ll do what I can to get it reviewed and merged, and another version of nupic.core released. But if it will take extensive review from a C++ expert on the research time, not so sure it would be worth creating a PR. Let me know how much work you think it will be.

5

Hi Matt,

good news I can compile nupic.core on Visual Studio 2017! Attached is a screenshot with the debugger on. :slight_smile:

Except for commenting out some yaml-cpp stuff, I think my code changes are pretty minor.

image
image.png1703×1439 226 KB

Regards,
Christian

1 Like
6

That’s great Christian! Thanks. I’ll look for your PR Monday.

7

Hi Matt,

here is a small update. With my cloned nupic.core repo I can now run 319 unit tests from which 37 are failing. Here is an overview.

I have created a fork and have now started setting myself up for a pull request. There is an issue with the “yaml-cpp” library. I think currently nupic.core is using an outdated version and my visual studio package manager doesn’t support it. Hence, I commented out some code. That would be explanation for some of the unit test failures.

Another “issue” or shall I say new feature is that I’m using python 3 bindings. So maybe we can use this release as a test bed for python 3? I saw some requests for that somewhere on the forum.

I’ll you updated.

Regards,
Christian

1 Like