Building SWI-Prolog using Conda

This repository is an attempt to build SWI-Prolog using Conda. We use conda-forge to get all the dependencies. The anaconda suite can build SWI-Prolog except for xpce that depends on several X11 packages that do not exist in anaconda and the native UUID library that depends on ossuuid.

Platform notes

Linux

Initially build and tested on Linux. Provides a complete system.

MacOS M1

Issues

• ossuuid is missing, so using partial pure Prolog UUID library rather than native
• libdb package provides X64 .dylib libraries. Dropped bdb package
• Building using GMP crashes. This is also the problem for the non-conda build, so we revert to the bundled LibBF

Windows (x64)

Builds using VS 2022.

Issues

• Not extensively tested
• Uses bundled LibBF for big integers and rational numbers

Install miniconda

Download and prepare miniconda. Note that we require conda-forge for packages. As is, this conflicts with defaults for building a package, claiming a merge conflict related to mpi. There are several suggesting for working around that. For me it worked to disable the defaults channel.

Download from https://docs.conda.io/projects/miniconda/en/latest/

conda config --append channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority strict
conda config --remove channels defaults
conda upgrade -c conda-forge --all
conda install conda-build
conda install conda-verify

Building

conda build . 2>&1 | tee build.log
conda create -n swipl
conda activate swipl
conda install --use-local swi-prolog
conda build purge

Debugging the build

• Use the non-powershell here becasue build_env_setup.bat is not available for powershell.

  cd ~/miniconda3/conda-bld\swi-prolog_NNN call build_env_setup.bat cd build cmake --build --config Release

Start Conda shell on Windows

• Search "anaconda" and open the desired shell.
• Use the PowerShell prompt for conda build

Status of this repository

This repo was started before I found the conda-forge feedstock for SWI-Prolog at https://github.com/conda-forge/swi-prolog-feedstock. Eventually, this work will be merged into this conda-forge feedstock. As is, this recipe is cross-platform and deals with the latest release and notably with the Python interface.

In particular, we still must pay attention to conda-forge/swi-prolog-feedstock#18 (comment)

Some Conda doc links

• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/latest/user-guide/tutorials/build-pkgs.html
• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/stable/user-guide/recipes/debugging.html
• https://conda-forge.org/docs/maintainer/knowledge_base.html