Compilation on macOS (macOS 14 on M-Series Macs)

This is a rough guide for compiling CandidateVectorSearch on macOS 14.4, which should generally work on most macOS versions running on arm64-based Apple systems.

Installing dependencies

The following dependencies are required for compilation:

• Xcode Command Line Tools: xcode-select --install
• Homebrew: /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
• gcc / g++: brew install gcc
• .NET 6.0: Install .NET on macOS

Building the matrix multiplication backend (C++)

To build the C++ library used for matrix multiplication the following steps are required:

• Navigate to the VectorSearch directory: cd VectorSearch
• Build the DLL: g++-13 -shared -I eigen-3.4.0 -fPIC -fopenmp -O3 -o VectorSearch.dll dllmainUnix.cpp
• In case you get an error from the linker, you might want to try this instead: g++-13 -Wl,-ld_classic -shared -I eigen-3.4.0 -fPIC -fopenmp -O3 -o VectorSearch.dll dllmainUnix.cpp

Building the prototype testing suite (C#)

To build the C# testing application the following steps need to be carried out:

• Navigate to the DataLoader directory: cd DataLoader
• Build the executable: dotnet publish DataLoader.csproj --runtime osx-arm64 --self-contained --configuration Release

Running the executable

• Copy VectorSearch.dll to the build directory of DataLoader.
• Run the executable. For example with ./DataLoader EigenSIntB 10000.
• Note that we only supply the compiled binaries for CPU-based search. GPU-based search is not available because Macs don't support Nvidia GPUs!

Running the executable without building / compiling yourself

We provide compiled binaries in DataLoaderExecutable/macos_arm and in the Releases tab. Please again note that we only supply the compiled binaries for CPU-based search. Running the compiled binaries requires .NET 6.0 and g++.