Build from sources

Install GCC and CMake

The main compilation directives are specified using

• GCC compiler to build the binaries

• CMake to create the Makefiles

Linux

Both gcc and cmake commands are already installed by default.

Mac OS

Install Xcode and command line tools

1. Install the latest release of Xcode.

2. Install the command line tools by executing from the terminal

   xcode-select --install
   

Install CMake via Homebrew

1. Install Homebrew and update its packages to the latest version.

2. Install cmake by executing

   brew install cmake
   

Windows

1. Install TDM-GCC 32bit or 64bit depending on your platform.

2. Install the latest binaries of CMake.

Build the binaries

Run the following commands from the terminal

1. You first need to get the sources from one of these two options:

   • Download the compressed source file from the latest OSQP release at GitHub.

   • Clone the repository

     git clone https://github.com/osqp/osqp
     

2. Create build directory and change directory

   cd osqp
   mkdir build
   cd build
   

3. Create Makefiles

   • In Linux and Mac OS run

     cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ..
     

   • In Windows run

     cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
     

4. Compile OSQP

   cmake --build .
   

Thanks to CMake, it is possible to create projects for a wide variety of IDEs; see here for more details. For example, to create a project for Visual Studio 17 2022, it is just necessary to run

cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" ..

To generate unittests for OSQP, specify the -DOSQP_BUILD_UNITTESTS=ON flag. This requires that you have numpy and scipy python modules, so it is best to do this in a python virtual environment where you have these packages installed.

cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DOSQP_BUILD_UNITTESTS=ON ..

The compilation will generate the demo osqp_demo (and the unittests osqp_tester if you generated them) executable. In the case of Unix Makefiles or MinGW Makefiles option they are located in the build/out/ directory. Run them to check that the compilation was correct.

Once the sources are built, the generated static build/out/libosqpstatic.a and shared build/out/libosqp.ext (where ext is .so/.dylib/.dll depending on your platform) libraries can be used to interface any C/C++ software to OSQP (see C installation).

Install the binaries

To install the generated libraries and headers to a system-wide location compatible with GNU standards it is just necessary to run

cmake --build . --target install

This code installs the libraries in libdir and the headers into includedir/osqp. For mode details see the defaults folders on the GNU standards website. To change the installation prefix, in the “Create Makefiles” step above, you need to specify the destination folder as cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=myfolder ...

Note

This step requires write permissions in the destination folders. You might be able to gain access using the sudo command.

We provided also an uninstall routine to remove the copied files by running

cmake --build . --target uninstall

Note that this corresponds to running make install and make uninstall on unix machines.