Building the ML SDK Model Converter

The build system must have:

• C/C++ 17 compiler: GCC, or optionally Clang on Linux and MSVC on Windows®.

• CMake 3.25 or later.

• Ninja 1.8.2 or later.

• Python 3.10 or later and uv 0.9.26. Test and tooling dependencies are declared in pyproject.toml and locked in uv.lock.

The following dependencies are also needed:

• Argument Parser for Modern C++.

• LLVM.

• TOSA Tools.

For the preferred dependency versions see the manifest file.

Building with the script

Arm® provides a python build script to make build configuration options easily discoverable. When the script is run from a git-repo manifest checkout, the script uses default paths and does not require any additional arguments. Otherwise the paths to the dependencies must be specified.

To build on Linux, run:

SDK_PATH="path/to/sdk"
python3 ${SDK_PATH}/sw/model-converter/scripts/build.py -j $(nproc) \
    --vgf-lib-path ${SDK_PATH}/sw/vgf-lib \
    --flatbuffers-path ${SDK_PATH}/dependencies/flatbuffers \
    --argparse-path ${SDK_PATH}/dependencies/argparse \
    --tosa-tools-path ${SDK_PATH}/dependencies/tosa-tools \
    --external-llvm ${SDK_PATH}/dependencies/llvm-project

To build on Windows®, run:

$env:SDK_PATH="path\to\sdk"
$cores = [System.Environment]::ProcessorCount
python3 "$env:SDK_PATH\sw\model-converter\scripts\build.py" -j $cores `
    --vgf-lib-path "$env:SDK_PATH\sw\vgf-lib" `
    --flatbuffers-path "$env:SDK_PATH\dependencies\flatbuffers" `
    --argparse-path "$env:SDK_PATH\dependencies\argparse" `
    --tosa-tools-path "$env:SDK_PATH\dependencies\tosa-tools" `
    --external-llvm "$env:SDK_PATH\dependencies\llvm-project"

If the components are in their default locations, it is not necessary to specify the --vgf-lib-path, --flatbuffers-path, --argparse-path, --tosa-tools-path, and --external-llvm options.

Tests can be enabled and run with --test and linting by --lint. To enable tests and documentation building python dependencies must be installed:

uv sync --locked --no-install-project --no-default-groups --group test --group tooling

Run build commands with uv run --no-sync python scripts/build.py to use the locked environment. To build documentation, pass --doc; Doxygen must also be installed on the machine.

You can install the project build artifacts into a specified location by passing the option --install with the required path.

To create an archive containing the build artifacts, pass the --package-type option with an archive type such as zip or tgz. Use --package-dir to choose where the archive is written; by default, packages are written to the build directory.

For more information, see the help output:

python3 scripts/build.py --help

Code coverage

Sync the locked test and tooling dependencies, then run the unit and lit tests on Linux with GCC coverage instrumentation:

uv sync --locked --no-install-project --no-default-groups --group test --group tooling
uv run --no-sync python scripts/build.py --coverage --build-dir build-coverage

The coverage command writes a detailed HTML report to build-coverage/coverage/index.html and a machine-readable JSON summary to build-coverage/coverage/summary.json. Coverage is collected for Model Converter sources; tests, LLVM, and bundled dependencies are excluded.