CODEWITHSUNDEEP
tensorflow
chippies
chippies

Reputation: 1615

How to build TensorFlow C++ library on Windows XP 32-bit

I'm attempting to build TensorFlow's C++ library for Windows XP. While I've been able to build and use it on Windows 10, 32-bit XP isn't working. The background: I'm working on a COM module that calls fuctions from tensorflow.dll. My build environment:

The sequence I use to build tensorflow.dll is:

The last step also involves some manual labour as the build process doesn't copy .lib files from the 3rd part dependencies to where they are needed. For whatever reason, a bunch of INSTALL projects never get run so I had to do that manually each time the build would fail while looking for a missing lib file. Once that was done, the build completed successfully.

Next I copy my COM module (a DLL) and the TensorFlow DLL over to a Windows XP virtual machine for testing and try to register the COM module, but get an error LoadLibrary("MyDLL.dll") - The specified procedure could not be found. I don't know what procedure it is looking for, so the best I can offer is that Dependency Walker highlights WS2_32.DLL and tells me it can't find inet_ntop and inet_pton.

Any suggestions on how to build TensorFlow so that it doesn't use these two functions?

P.S. suggestions of "Stop using XP, its old and no longer supported" don't help here. Upgrading to Windows 10 is an absolute last resort because of the disruption it would cause at the facility where this software will be tested.

Edit 1:

These two functions inet_pton and inet_ntop were only used in one file that forms part of Google Cloud Storage support in TensorFlow. The build process generated a tensorflow_static.lib in addition to tensorflow.dll. Linking against the static version and adding a few dependencies that aren't included in tensorflow_static.lib got rid of the code using inet_* functions.

My COM module still isn't working on Windows XP though because the file tensorflow\core\platform\windows\env.cc uses functions like CloseThreadpoolWork, submit SubmitThreadpoolWork, etc. that were only introduced in Windows Vista. It looks like I'll have to replace them with something else, as I don't see an alternative implementation in TensorFlow.

Additionally, I found that tensorflow\contrib\cmake\CMakeLists.txt forces _WIN32_WINNT=0x0A00 and that CXXFLAGS is the wrong environment variable to use. Changing it to CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS at least gets my macro definitions included, FWIW.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 847

Answers (2)

Tony LEe
Tony LEe

Reputation: 21

It is almost impossible to port tensorflow to windows xp, because:

  1. TF's platform depedent code requires some Windows APIs later than winxp such as Thread Pool API. This would possibly bypassed by using third party thread pool libs.

  2. The nsync, protobuf and eigen, which are core parts of TF, use C++11 thread_local, which makes them unable to run-time load as dll, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/parallel/thread-local-storage-tls?view=vs-2017 for details. This later feature can theoretically be replaced by old windows TLS API, which requires many modifications on TF's core framework.

Anyway, if you really need the xp support, good luck with that.

Upvotes: 2

chippies
chippies

Reputation: 1615

In the end I gave up on this as simply being impossible. Even replacing the thread pool functions with something from Boost didn't help. If someone else manages to get this working, I'll gladly accept that as the answer, but so far this looks impossible.

Upvotes: 0

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