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Developer Guide

This guide covers setting up a development environment for building IOWarp Core from source.

Linux (DevContainer)​

The recommended way to develop on Linux is using the provided DevContainers, which come pre-configured with all dependencies via Conda.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker
  • VS Code or Cursor with the Dev Containers extension

Getting Started​

  1. Open the repository in VS Code/Cursor
  2. When prompted, select Reopen in Container
  3. Choose a configuration:
    • IOWarp Core (CPU-only) — recommended for most development
    • IOWarp Core (NVIDIA GPU) — for CUDA development (requires NVIDIA drivers + Container Toolkit)

Building​

cmake --preset=debug
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

Running Tests​

cd build && ctest

See .devcontainer/README.md for full details on container options, GPU setup, and troubleshooting.

Windows (Native Build)​

Windows support currently covers the Context Transport Primitives library. The runtime, CTE, CAE, and CEE subsystems are not yet ported to Windows.

Prerequisites​

  • Visual Studio 2022 with the "Desktop development with C++" workload
  • Git
  • CMake 3.19+ (included with Visual Studio or install separately)
  • vcpkg — install and set the VCPKG_ROOT environment variable:
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git C:\vcpkg
C:\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
# Set VCPKG_ROOT environment variable to C:\vcpkg
[System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("VCPKG_ROOT", "C:\vcpkg", "User")

Installing Dependencies​

The project root contains a vcpkg.json manifest. When you configure with a vcpkg-enabled CMake preset, dependencies are installed automatically — no manual vcpkg install step is needed.

Building​

# Configure (vcpkg installs dependencies automatically)
cmake --preset=windows-debug

# Build
cmake --build build --config Debug

Running Tests​

cd build
ctest -C Debug

Current Limitations​

The following subsystems are disabled on Windows and will not build:

  • Context Runtime (WRP_CORE_ENABLE_RUNTIME=OFF)
  • Context Transfer Engine (WRP_CORE_ENABLE_CTE=OFF)
  • Context Assimilation Engine (WRP_CORE_ENABLE_CAE=OFF)
  • Context Execution Engine (WRP_CORE_ENABLE_CEE=OFF)

HDF5 is also disabled in the Windows presets since it is optional and not required for the transport primitives.

CMake Presets​

PresetDescription
windows-debugDebug build with tests enabled
windows-releaseRelease build with tests enabled
windows-pipRelease build for pip wheels (no tests)

See installers/vcpkg/README.md for details on the vcpkg integration.