tilelang-build

name	tilelang-build
description	Repository-specific build, rebuild, install, and test instructions for tilelang. Use when working in the tilelang repository and the correct commands are needed for building from source, reinstalling after changes, or running project tests.

Build & Install

Installing / Rebuilding tilelang

The standard way to build and install:

pip install .

Or with verbose output for debugging build issues:

pip install . -v

uv pip install . also works if uv is available but is not required.

Build dependencies are declared in pyproject.toml and resolved automatically during pip install ..

If ccache is available, repeated builds only recompile changed C++ files.

Alternative: Development Build with --no-build-isolation

If you need faster iteration (e.g. calling cmake directly to recompile C++ without re-running the full pip install), install build dependencies first:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip install --no-build-isolation .

After this, you can invoke cmake --build build directly to recompile only changed C++ files. This is useful when iterating on C++ code.

Alternative: cmake + PYTHONPATH (recommended for C++ development)

For the fastest C++ iteration, bypass pip entirely and drive cmake directly:

# Configure (auto-detects CUDA; git submodules are initialised automatically)
cmake -S . -B build

# Build
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

# Make the local tilelang package importable
export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd):$PYTHONPATH

After the initial configure, recompiling is just cmake --build build -j$(nproc). The runtime automatically discovers native libraries from build/lib/ when it detects a dev checkout (see tilelang/env.py).

Useful cmake options:

Flag	Purpose
-DUSE_CUDA=ON/OFF	Enable/disable CUDA backend (ON by default)
-DUSE_ROCM=ON	Enable ROCm/HIP backend
-DUSE_METAL=ON	Enable Metal backend (default on macOS)
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug	Debug build with TVM_LOG_DEBUG enabled

Editable Installs

pip install -e . is a supported development install, and is what README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and docs/get_started/Installation.md recommend for development:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pip install -e . -v --no-build-isolation

Notes specific to this repo's layout:

• When Python is run from the repo root, the local ./tilelang directory is imported instead of any copy installed into site-packages (because the repo root is on sys.path ahead of site-packages). This is by design: tilelang/env.py detects a dev checkout (when 3rdparty/ is not inside the package dir) and loads native libraries from build/lib/ and build/tvm/, logging Loading tilelang libs from dev root: <repo>/build.
• Because of the above, both approaches resolve imports to the local ./tilelang when run from the repo root. Use pip install -e . when you want pip to manage package metadata/dependencies; use PYTHONPATH=$(pwd) only for the lighter-weight import-only workflow.
• For pure C++ iteration (no Python metadata needed), the cmake + PYTHONPATH flow above is faster and avoids re-running pip entirely.

Running Tests

Most tests require a GPU.

python -m pytest testing/python/ -x

Run a specific test file or test case:

python -m pytest testing/python/language/test_tilelang_language_copy.py -x
python -m pytest testing/python/language/test_tilelang_language_copy.py -x -k "test_name"

For Metal-specific tests (requires macOS with Apple Silicon):

python -m pytest testing/python/metal/ -x