MS-Windows binaries

Are there pre-built binaries for MS-Windows? I found binaries for various linux flavors (Releases · stan-dev/cmdstan · GitHub), but nothing for Windows.

If not, why not? I see the build process does some CPU-specific tuning, but that is surely true for Linux as well.

It seems screwy that there are prebuilt binaries for heterogenous platforms on which users are often used to building software, but nothing for the relatively homogenous MS-Windows platform on which users rarely build their own.

The source code tree GitHub - stan-dev/cmdstan: CmdStan, the command line interface to Stan doesn’t really seem to have instructions for how to build on any platform, information usually found in a README or INSTALL file. This would specify the toolchain and other software dependencies, as well as specific steps to accomplish the build. There is a makefile.

These are not pre-built binaries. The only thing that is prebuilt is the Stan-to-C++ compiler.

For all x86 OS, use the tarball without a specified OS, that one has the compiler binaries for x86 Linux/Mac/Windows.

Building instructions can be found in the Cmdstan Users Guide 1 CmdStan Installation | CmdStan User’s Guide

That same section also mentions the fact that Cmdstan is available (pre-built and with the required toolchain also vendored) on Conda-forge if you are a conda user Cmdstan :: Anaconda.org

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Thank you. I was forgetting there’s no getting around the compiler, since one needs it to get from a Stan model to results.

Is https://github.com/stan-dev/cmdstan/releases/download/v2.28.2/cmdstan-2.28.2.tar.gz the tarball you are referring to, specifically bin/windows-stanc within it for a pre-built stan to c++ compiler?

Indeed, that is the one.

Thank you for the pointer on installation. I think it would be helpful if the source tree had that information too, or at least a pointer to it.

To partly explain why I didn’t see the fine manual, I started off wanting to use the julia interface. It said it required CmdStan as a prerequisite, so I then ran to install it.

Seeing no binaries or instructions on how to build it, I decided RStan would be a safer choice. That also hasn’t worked out yet, but that’s another story