Build Process

The HACL C library is built with CMake and ninja and uses a Python driver script called mach. Due to the modular nature of the library the build is more complex than for many other libraries.

Selecting Algorithms

The algorithms compiled into the library can be selected using the -a|--algorithm argument on mach. By default all algorithms are selected. The files used in the build are selected by running a dependency analysis on the requested algorithm files (see configure.py). The resulting configuration is written into build/config.cmake, which is used as input into the main build process. This process is part of the mach script.

Platform Detection

Depending on the used toolchain a different set of algorithms can be used. In order to define the feature set available in the toolchain CMake runs a set of tests. Note that the toolchain feature must not be the same as the platform feature set the build is running on (due to cross compilation or extended features in the toolchain compared to the actual hardware). The library has runtime feature detection to ensure that hardware features are only used when they are actually available.

Release Builds

By default the builds use the debug mode. For release builds

./mach build --release

is used.