[mpact] set up build instructions
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+mlir_venv/
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+# The MPACT Project
+
+## Introduction
+
+The MPACT project's main objective is to dramatically reduce the effort
+required to create highly optimizing HPC and ML compilers for a large class
+of architectures using LLVM and MLIR. We will do this by providing a
+declarative language-based mechanism for collecting and expressing
+critical aspects of a target architecture in a way that can be reasoned
+about and leveraged by all passes in both MLIR and LLVM.
+
+## Building the MPACT compiler
+
+To build and run the MPACT compiler from source (for developers),
+please follow the steps below.
+
+### Check out code and sync submodules
+
+Use the following commands to clone the MPACT compiler repository.
+
+```shell
+git clone https://github.com/MPACT-ORG/mpact-compiler.git
+cd mpact-compiler
+git submodule update --init --progress
+```
+
+All following commands assume you remain in the `mpact-compiler` directory.
+
+### Setup Python virtual environment
+
+The following commands initialize a virtual environment.
+
+```shell
+python3.11 -m venv mlir_venv # one time set up
+source mlir_venv/bin/activate # for each session
+```
+
+### Install build requirements
+
+Note that currently we rely on `torch-mlir` requirements defined in the
+submodule to ensure all the build requirements are consistent.
+
+```shell
+python -m pip install --upgrade pip
+python -m pip install -r externals/torch-mlir/requirements.txt
+python -m pip install -r externals/torch-mlir/torchvision-requirements.txt
+```
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-## Introduction
