Setup

Rat-vcpkg and vcpkg have some prerequisites in order to fully enable their features.

Install a compilation toolchain

vcpkg requires a compilation toolchain to be up and ready to compile C/C++.

The compilation toolchain consists of a compiler, a linker and several other related tools that are needed for the compilation of C/C++ libraries and programs. This part differs depending on the targeted platform (e.g. Windows VS the world).

Compilation toolchain table

Platforms

Compilers

Linkers

Windows

cl.exe

ld.exe

UNIX (Linux/macOS)

gcc, g++, clang

ldd, lld

A - Windows | MSVC Build Tools

Installation come in the form of a classical wizard installer for the MSVC toolchain.

Caution

The compilation has been tested on MSVC v2019-2022. The v2025 is NOT compatible with the compilation of some packages such as the SuiteSparse libraries for the time being.

New shells should be available from the Windows Start Menu once the installation is complete. Hit the ⊞ Win key and look for something like Developer PowerShell for VS 20XX (depending on the version).

This is a PowerShell terminal that starts with a special .ps1 script to update environment variables for the MSVC toolchain to work properly. It should be used for the rest of this documentation in order to have access to all the MSVC toolchain needed to compile applications on Windows.

Note

  • There exists an equivalent version using cmd instead of PowerShell if preferred. Just make sure to translate commands accordingly.

  • For the rest of this documentation, this terminal will be refered as the MSVC shell.

  • Use the MSVC shell to compile libraries, run programs and use vcpkg.

  • If using the Windows Terminal, one can add a profile with the following start script to have a smooth experience:

powershell.exe -noexit -command "& 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Tools\Launch-VsDevShell.ps1' -arch amd64 -host amd64"

B - UNIX (Linux/macOS) | GNU toolchain

The UNIX world being very wide and various some steps might need some adaptation from the user.

The broad idea is to get items such as a compiler, linker, configure tools, and some additional headers and libraries if needed depending on the environment.

Under WSL2 Ubuntu24 this looks like something like this:

# Compiler, linker, configure tools
sudo apt-get install build-essential

# OpenGL related items, for WSL
sudo apt-get install mesa-utils libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev

Do not hesitate to install more things if needed.

To complete the toolchain, install the following:

  • CMake for the build configuration,

  • Ninja for the build system.

Note

vcpkg will install its own CMake and Ninja since it likes to handle its own items, but it might still be interesting to install them just in case. We’re here to compile some C/C++ code anyway.

Install Git

Use the above installer or any package manager.

All the default options should be good to go if you do not know much about git. Ensure it works properly by opening a new shell and running git --version.

git will be used for cloning (downloading) vcpkg and Project-Rat dependencies to compile them locally.

Install vcpkg

vcpkg is a bit different: it needs to be cloned, and then bootstrapped it, which is quite nice.

Clone the vcpkg repository in a convenient place for ease of access.

  • Open up a shell and navigate to a handy place.

  • Clone the vcpkg repository locally:

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git

  • Navigate into it & bootstrap it:

cd vcpkg
.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat -disableMetrics

This will generate a vcpkg executable inside the repository and can be used by the system and user to install and handle packages.

See also

More information about vcpkg can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/vcpkg/get_started/get-started?pivots=shell-cmd

  • Add the local vcpkg repository to the PATH environment variable.

$env:Path="C:\path\to\vcpkg;$env:Path"

Verify the vcpkg command is available from the shell:

vcpkg --version

This should print the version as a Git commit hash.

Install CUDA Toolkit & NVIDIA drivers

Note

This part is optional and should be done to enable NVIDIA CUDA GPU acceleration for Rat calculations.

Computers without graphics cards will not be able to benefit from this acceleration.

  • Install the CUDA Toolkit. Setups should be similar to these for most users:

NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit table

Plaforms

Installers

Windows

CUDA Toolkit Windows

WSL2 Ubuntu

CUDA Toolkit WSL2 Ubuntu

  • Install the latest NVIDIA drivers. This will depend on the graphics card at hand.

Danger

If using WSL, do NOT install NVIDIA drivers in the Linux distribution. Install them on Windows only.

Find your graphics card model via the NVIDIA Control Panel in the Start Menu, e.g. NVIDIA RTX 1000 Ada Generation, and search for it in the search bar of the above web page. Download and install the corresponding driver.

  • Update PATH environment variable to reflect CUDA installation (change the 13.0 to the version on the system if needed).

$env:Path="C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v13.0\bin;$env:Path"      # binaries
$env:Path="C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v13.0\bin\x64;$env:Path"  # libraries

Important

Paths to CUDA installation must remain visible when compiling anything requiring the CUDA Toolkit.

For a more long lasting setup consider adding these paths to the PATH environment variable either via a PowerShell profile or via Windows environment variables menu.

Install an IDE

Any IDE (Integrated Development Environment) should do the trick. Here are some random propositions:

One might want to write some code using Rat C++ libraries after all.