Build C++ libraries on Windows

Prerequisites

Chocolatey

    choco upgrade all
    choco install cmake git visualstudio2019-workload-vctools visualstudio2019buildtools

    choco install -y python3 --version=3.10.8

Build

First, clone nnabla and go into the root folder.

Then, the following batch script does everything including setting up the rest of dependencies and compiling libraries.

    cmd /c nnabla\build-tools\msvc\build_cpplib.bat

    cmd /c nnabla\build-tools\msvc\test_nbla.bat

This will setup the following dependency libraries of the NNabla C++ utility

• LibArchive
• ZLib
• Protobuf

into the third_party folder, and these are used when compiling and running NNabla utility library. Note that HDF5 is not supported on Windows so far, which means you can not use a .h5 parameter file in C++ inference/training. (TODO: Write how to create .protobuf file from .nnp or .h5).

It also sets up NNabla core library and the C++ utility library (nnabla.dll, nnabla_utils.dll and their .lib and .exp files).

If you want to build with Debug mode, you have to set an environment variable build_type as following before running the batch script above.

set build_type=Debug

Use the library in your C++ application

To build your C++ binary with NNabla C++ utilities, you need:

• Set <nnabla root>\include folder as include path
• Set nnabla.lib and nnabla_utils.lib as libraries (use .dlib when Debug mode)

At runtime, you will need the following dynamic link libraries located in a right path.

• nnabla.dll
• nnabla_utils.dll
• zlibwapi.dll
• archive.dll

Please find these libraries built in this instruction by searching them at NNabla root folder.