This page describes how to set up Taskflow in your project. We will also go through the building process of unit tests and examples.

Setting Up Taskflow

Taskflow is header-only and there is no need for installation. Simply download the source and copy the headers under the directory taskflow/ to your project.

~$ git clone https://github.com/taskflow/taskflow.git
~$ cd taskflow/
~$ cp -r taskflow myproject/include/

Compile and Link Flags

Taskflow is written in C++14 and is built on top of C++ standardized threading libraries to improve portability. To compile a Taskflow program, say simple.cpp, you need to tell the compiler where to find the Taskflow header files and link it through the system thread library (usually POSIX threads in Linux-like systems). Take gcc for an example:

~$ g++ simple.cpp -I myproject/include/ -O2 -pthread -o simple

Supported Compilers

To use Taskflow, you only need a compiler that supports C++14:

GNU C++ Compiler at least v5.0 with -std=c++14
Clang C++ Compiler at least v4.0 with -std=c++14
Microsoft Visual Studio at least v15.7 (MSVC++ 19.14)
AppleClang Xode Version at least v8
Nvidia CUDA Toolkit and Compiler (nvcc) at least v10.0 with -std=c++14

Taskflow works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Build Examples and Unit Tests

Taskflow uses CMake to build examples and unit tests. We recommend using out-of-source build.

~$ cd path/to/taskflow
~$ mkdir build
~$ cd build
~$ cmake ../
~$ make                         # compile all examples and unittests
~$ make test
Running tests...
/usr/bin/ctest --force-new-ctest-process
Test project /home/tsung-wei/Code/taskflow/build
        Start   1: passive_vector
  1/254 Test   #1: passive_vector ...................   Passed    0.04 sec
        Start   2: function_traits
  2/254 Test   #2: function_traits ..................   Passed    0.00 sec
        Start   3: object_pool.sequential
  3/254 Test   #3: object_pool.sequential ...........   Passed    0.10 sec
...
        Start 253: cuda_kmeans.1000.8C8G
253/254 Test #253: cuda_kmeans.1000.8C8G ............   Passed    0.19 sec
        Start 254: cuda_kmeans.1000.16C16G
254/254 Test #254: cuda_kmeans.1000.16C16G ..........   Passed    0.24 sec
100% tests passed, 0 tests failed out of 254
Total Test time (real) =  29.67 sec

When the building completes, you can find the executables for examples and tests under the two folders, examples/ and unittests/. By default, our CMake script automatically detects the existence of a CUDA compiler and compiles all GPU tests and examples if one is available.

Available CMake Options

You can list a set of available options in the cmake.

~$ cmake -LA
...
TF_BUILD_BENCHMARKS:BOOL=OFF    # by default, we don't compile benchmarks 
TF_BUILD_CUDA:BOOL=ON           # by default, we compile CUDA code
...
... more options

Currently, our CMake script supports the following options:

CMake Option	Default	Usage
TF_BUILD_BENCHMARKS	OFF	enable/disable building benchmarks
TF_BUILD_CUDA	ON	enable/disable building CUDA code
TF_BUILD_EXAMPLES	ON	enable/disable building examples
TF_BUILD_TESTS	ON	enable/disable building unit tests

To enable or disable a specific option, use -D in the CMake build. For example:

~$ cmake ../ -DTF_BUILD_CUDA=OFF # disable building CUDA code

Build Benchmarks

We have developed a set of benchmarks comparing Taskflow with OpenMP and Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB) libraries. To build these benchmarks, you need to configure the option TF_BUILD_BENCHMARKS to ON.

~$ cmake ../ -DTF_BUILD_BENCHMARKS=ON

~$ make

You can find the binary of each benchmark under the folder benchmarks/.