conda_setup.md

Setup Instructions with Conda

To create a new conda env compatible with kittens, use:

conda create -n kittens python=3.11
conda activate kittens
conda install cuda==12.4.0 -c nvidia

Note that if you try to profile your kernels by launching ncu or ncu-ui, you may get an error message like:

ERROR : nsight-compute directory is not found under <YOUR_PATH_HERE>/miniconda3/envs/kittens/bin/../ or /opt/nvidia. Nsight Compute is not installed on your system.

This seems to be due to a bug in the ncu launcher script's detection of the appropriate programs when they're installed under conda. As a workaround, adding the following shell functions to your .bashrc / .zshrc should do the trick:

ncu2() {
    local original_ncu_path=$(which ncu)
    local nsight_compute_base_dir=$(dirname $(dirname $original_ncu_path))/nsight-compute
    local nsight_compute_version_dir=$(find $nsight_compute_base_dir -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | head -n 1)

    if [ -n "$nsight_compute_version_dir" ]; then
        export LATEST_NSIGHT_COMPUTE_TOOL_DIR="$nsight_compute_version_dir"
    else
        echo "Nsight Compute directory not found."
        return 1
    fi

    # Invoke the original ncu command with all passed arguments
    sudo LATEST_NSIGHT_COMPUTE_TOOL_DIR="$nsight_compute_version_dir" $original_ncu_path "$@"
}


ncu-ui2() {
    local original_ncu_ui_path=$(which ncu-ui)
    local nsight_compute_base_dir=$(dirname $(dirname $original_ncu_ui_path))/nsight-compute    
    local nsight_compute_version_dir=$(find $nsight_compute_base_dir -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | head -n 1)

    if [ -n "$nsight_compute_version_dir" ]; then
        export LATEST_NSIGHT_COMPUTE_TOOL_DIR="$nsight_compute_version_dir"
    else
        echo "Nsight Compute directory not found."
        return 1
    fi

    # Invoke the original ncu command with all passed arguments
    sudo LATEST_NSIGHT_COMPUTE_TOOL_DIR="$nsight_compute_version_dir" $original_ncu_ui_path "$@"
}

With these commands, you could be able to use ncu2 and ncu-ui2 as replacements for ncu and ncu-ui, respectively.