Table of Contents
Install TensorFlow for C
TensorFlow provides a C API that can be used to build bindings for other languages. The API is defined in c_api.hand designed for simplicity and uniformity rather than convenience.
Supported Platforms
TensorFlow for C is supported on the following systems:
- Linux, 64-bit, x86
- macOS X, Version 10.12.6 (Sierra) or higher
- Windows, 64-bit x86
Setup
Download
| TensorFlow C library | URL |
|---|---|
| Linux | |
| Linux CPU only | https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-cpu-linux-x86_64-1.12.0.tar.gz |
| Linux GPU support | https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-gpu-linux-x86_64-1.12.0.tar.gz |
| macOS | |
| macOS CPU only | https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-cpu-darwin-x86_64-1.12.0.tar.gz |
| Windows | |
| Windows CPU only | https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-cpu-windows-x86_64-1.12.0.zip |
| Windows GPU only | https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/libtensorflow/libtensorflow-gpu-windows-x86_64-1.12.0.zip |
Extract
Extract the downloaded archive, which contains the header files to include in your C program and the shared libraries to link against.
On Linux and macOS, you may want to extract to /usr/local/lib:
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf (downloaded file)
Linker
On Linux/macOS, if you extract the TensorFlow C library to a system directory, such as /usr/local, configure the linker with ldconfig:
sudo ldconfig
If you extract the TensorFlow C library to a non-system directory, such as ~/mydir, then configure the linker environmental variables:
export LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:~/mydir/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/mydir/lib
Build
Example program
With the TensorFlow C library installed, create an example program with the following source code (hello_tf.c):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <tensorflow/c/c_api.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello from TensorFlow C library version %s\n", TF_Version());
return 0;
}
Compile
Compile the example program to create an executable, then run:
gcc hello_tf.c -ltensorflow -o hello_tf./hello_tf
The command outputs: Hello from TensorFlow C library version number
Success: The TensorFlow C library is configured.
If the program doesn't build, make sure that gcc can access the TensorFlow C library. If extracted to /usr/local, explicitly pass the library location to the compiler:
gcc -I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib hello_tf.c -ltensorflow -o hello_tf
Build from source
TensorFlow is open source. Read the instructions to build TensorFlow's C library from source code.