Better Cilk Development With Docker

I’m taking a course that focuses on parallel and distributed computing. We use a compiler extension for GCC called Cilk to develop parallel programs in C/C++. Cilk offers developers a simple method for developing parallel code, and as a plus it now comes included in GCC since version 4.9.

The unjust thing with this course is that the professor provides a hefty 4GB Ubuntu virtual machine just for running the GNU compiler with Cilk. No sane person would download an entire virtual machine image just to run a compiler.

Docker comes to the rescue. It couldn’t be more space effective and convenient to use Cilk from a Docker container. I’ve created a simple Dockerfile containing the latest GNU compiler for Ubuntu 16.04. Here are some Gists showing how to build and run a Dockerfile which contain the dependencies needed to build and run Cilk programs.

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Jon Simpson

I'm a software engineering professional interested in Continuous Delivery, Lean, hipster programming languages, and distributed computing. In my spare time I enjoy reading books, tasting craft beers, and exploring Canada's capital. I have a Bachelors of Computer Science with a specialization in Network Computing from Carleton University, Ottawa.

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