Is there a way to find out the compilation details of binary artifacts shipped with a package?

vvbond · May 17, 2023, 8:32am

My particular use case concerns the FFTW library shipped with the FFTW.jl package, but my interest is general.

Investigating performance of a FFT-based signal processing pipeline implemented in c++, I’ve noticed a performance gain when linking against libfftw3f from FFTW.jl as opposed to linking against my custom-built library. Therefore, I’m curious how exactly the FFTW.jl’s version was compiled for a given platform.

I’ve searched the FFTW.jl repo for some clues, but to no avail. I assume it makes use of BinaryBuilder, but not sure how to proceed with the investigation.

Hence the question: is there a consistent way to get to this kind of details about shipped binaries?

giordano · May 17, 2023, 9:16am

The package providing the binary library is called FFTW_jll:

github.com

JuliaMath/FFTW.jl/blob/e4a00b1d410a78288d4c3a4fd19202a78536458b/Project.toml#L7


      
          name = "FFTW"
          uuid = "7a1cc6ca-52ef-59f5-83cd-3a7055c09341"
          version = "1.7.0"
          
          
[deps]
          AbstractFFTs = "621f4979-c628-5d54-868e-fcf4e3e8185c"
          FFTW_jll = "f5851436-0d7a-5f13-b9de-f02708fd171a"
          LinearAlgebra = "37e2e46d-f89d-539d-b4ee-838fcccc9c8e"
          MKL_jll = "856f044c-d86e-5d09-b602-aeab76dc8ba7"
          Preferences = "21216c6a-2e73-6563-6e65-726566657250"
          Reexport = "189a3867-3050-52da-a836-e630ba90ab69"
          
          
[compat]
          AbstractFFTs = "1.0"
          FFTW_jll = "3.3.9"
          MKL_jll = "2019.0.117, 2020, 2021, 2022"
          Preferences = "1.2"

If you then go to the repository of FFTW_jll in the README you’ll find the link to the originating build_tarballs.jl which is the script used to compile the library and has the information you’re looking for.

vvbond · May 17, 2023, 9:24am

Thanks a lot for help @giordano. The info was right in front of me.

Here is a brief summary for my own reference:

The right place to delve into Julia’s packages is https://github.com/JuliaPackaging. The recipes for BinaryBuilder-built binaries are found at https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/Yggdrasil.

Information relevant to my particular use case regarding FFTW.jl can be found at https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/Yggdrasil/tree/master/F/FFTW which is also referenced by the FFTW_jll binary wrapper - the actual package providing the libfftw3 binaries.