Windows

Below are instructions for compiling QuESTlink from source on Windows, using only the command line. These instructions will install the Microsoft Visual Studio Compiler (MSVC), the Chocolatey package manager, and a Windows-compatible GNUMake.

• 1 - Build Tools for VS
• 2 - Choco
• 3 - GNUMake
• 4 - Compile
• 5 - Run

1 - Build Tools for VS

Download Build Tools for Visual Studio from this page, and install it.

This will provide both the Developer Powershell for VS and the Developer Command Prompt for VS.

Open Developer Command Prompt and check that commands

cl

and

link -help

are correctly recognised.

2 - Choco

Open Developer Powershell as an administrator and enter

Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned

then

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

If you are unable to paste this command via ctrl-v, click the icon top-left of the powershell window and select paste

This downloads Chocolatey, a Windows package manager.

3 - GNUMake

Still in Developer Powershell, enter

choco install make

This creates the make command in the Developer Command Prompt.

4 - Compile

We're now ready to compile. Open Developer Command Prompt and make sure

make --version

is a recognised command; you may have to close and re-open the command prompt first.

Next, open the makefile in any editor, and set:

• OS = WINDOWS
• COMPILER = cl
• COMPILER_TYPE = MSVC
• WINDOWS_ARCH = 64 if using 64-bit Windows, else 32 (for x86)

If using 64-bit Windows, you must use a 64-bit Developer Command Prompt for the following instructions. E.g. VS2019 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt. You can find this prompt in the same directory as the developer command prompt.

To compile for GPU mode, install the CUDA toolkit (to get the nvcc command), and additionally set

• GPUACCELERATED = 1
• GPU_COMPUTE_CAPABILITY = to the value corresponding to your GPU (look up here) with no decimal-point (e.g. 7.1 becomes 71).

Then, in the Developer Command Prompt, navigate to the root QuESTlink directory (where makefile is located) and run

make

If successful, the quest_link.exe executable will be created, along with several leftover .o files which can be safely removed with

make tidy 

To recompile after changing a setting in the makefile, run

make clean
make

Note that trying to run quest_link.exe directly at this stage will report a DLL error.

5 - Run

5.1 - Locally

You can now open Mathematica and run

SetDirectory["path/to/QuESTlink/"]

Import["Link/QuESTlink.m"]
CreateLocalQuESTEnv["quest_link.exe"]

and use all facilities of QuEST.

5.2 - Remotely

The created quest_link.exe can be used as a server, accessed by Mathematica on another machine. To do this, after compiling, you must copy one of the following DLLs (depending on whether WINDOWS_ARCH is 32 or 64 bit) to the same location as quest_link.exe.

copy WSTP\Windows\wstp32i4.dll .
copy WSTP\Windows\wstp64i4.dll .

Running quest_link.exe directly now will create a network prompt, which can be ignored/closed.

To launch the server from the Developer Command Prompt, run

quest_link.exe -linkcreate -linkprotocol TCPIP -linkname <PORT1>@<IP>,<PORT2>@<IP>

substituting and with two open and available ports, and with the server IP or domain name.

Then in your Mathematica kernel on another machine, connect to it via

CreateRemoteQuESTEnv[<IP>, <PORT1>, <PORT2>];