Compiling Tensorflow from sources

Compiling Tensorflow from sources

First of all, we need a clean Ubuntu VM. I installed an Ubuntu 18.04LTS x86_64 with 80GB HD, 4 CPUs and 4GB of RAM.

After installing and setting the network, update:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Then install basic tools:

apt-get install python3-numpy python3-dev python3-pip python3-wheel

Then, download and install Bazel:

wget https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/download/0.15.2/bazel-0.15.2-linux-x86_64.deb
apt-get install ./bazel-0.15.2-linux-x86_64.deb

Then, download and extract Tensorflow source code:

wget https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/archive/v1.9.0.tar.gz
tar xvfz v1.9.0.tar.gz
cd tensorflow-1.9.0

and configure it:

./configure

During the configuration, specify the python location (in this case, /usr/bin/python3) and just accept the defaults.

After that, it's time to compile:

bazel build --config=opt //tensorflow/tools/pip_package:build_pip_package

during the compilation process, it may show many warnings.

The entire process will take about 2-3 hours.

To create a pip package:

./bazel-bin/tensorflow/tools/pip_package/build_pip_package /tmp/tensorflow_pkg

Under /tmp/tensorflow_pkg there will be the pip package: tensorflow-1.0-cp36-linux_x86_64.whl

It can be moved to the target machine and installed:

pip install /tmp/tensorflow_pkg/tensorflow-1.0-cp36-linux_x86_64.whl

Cross Compiling for Nanopi Neo (arm)

Download the toolchain gcc-linaro-arm.tar.xz from http://download.friendlyarm.com/nanopineo and uncompress it.

tar xvf gcc-linaro-arm.tar.xz

Then, since we are in a pure x64 architecture, we need to add i386 architecture:

dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
apt-get install gcc-multilib
apt-get install zlib1g:i386

so we are able to use the toolchain.