The RebirthDB Build System

To build RebirthDB, run:

./configure --allow-fetch
make

The --allow-fetch option tells make to fetch and build missing dependencies.

The full list of options accepted by the configure script can be listed with ./configure --help. The full list of variables that can be passed to make are documented in mk/defaults.mk. The possible targets are described below.

Development

Useful targets and variables during development.

• make clean: Remove the entire build/ directory.

• make SHOW_COUNTDOWN=0: Do not prefix make output with the rule count (such as [3/301]).

• make VERBOSE=1: Display each command being executed and their output.

• make -j <n>: Build in parallel. A good default for <n> is the amount of cores plus one.

Server

The server may depend on some of the fetched dependencies. Accessing its web UI also requires the web assets.

• make rebirthdb: Only build the server executable.

• make tags, make etags: Generate tag files used by vim and emacs.

• ./configure CXX=... CXXFLAGS=...: Build with a different compiler or flags.

• ./configure --ccache: Speed up repeated builds using ccache.

• There is a check-syntax target that can be used with emacs' flymake-mode.

• make SYMBOLS=0: Exclude debugging symbols.

• make SPLIT_SYMBOLS=1: Strip the executable and generate a symbols file.

• make DEBUG=1: Build in debug mode.

• When building on older distributions or porting to different platforms, these make options can also be useful: THREADED_COROUTINES=1 NO_EVENTFD=1 NO_EPOLL=1 BUILD_PORTABLE=1 or LEGACY_LINUX=1

Test

• make test: Invokes ./test/run

Coverage

• make coverage COVERAGE=1: Builds and runs rebirthdb-unittest with coverage flags enabled.

• make coverage COVERAGE=1 GENHTML=1: In addition to the above command, it also generates a HTML report.

Dependencies

• make support or make support-<dep>: Build the dependencies that have not been built yet.

• make fetch or make fetch-<dep>: Fetch the dependencies that have not yet been fetched.

• make build-<dep>: Rebuild a given dependency.

• make clean-<dep>: Clean the build directory of a given dependency.

• install-include-<dep>: Copy the include files from the given dependency.

• VERIFY_FETCH_HASH=0: Don't verify the hash of fetched archives.

Installation

• ./configure --prefix: Set the prefix folder used by make install.

• make install: Install RebirthDB to the prefix. If the DESTDIR variable is passed, install the files there. If STRIP_ON_INSTALL=1 is passed, also strip the executable.

• make install-binaries: Only install the server executable.

Packaging

• make build-deb: Build a debian binary

• make build-deb-src UBUNTU_RELEASE=<name> PACKAGE_BUILD_NUMBER=<n>: Build a package for the given Ubuntu version.

• make build-osx: Build a dmg installer for OS X. Jenkins always builds the dmg on OS X 10.7.5.

• make dist: Build a source distribution.

• The CentOS RPM are built with scripts/build-rpm.sh.

The build system

Some of the flags and targets can be used to debug the build system itself.

• make var-<VAR>: Print the value of the given variable.

• make -B: Force rebuilding all files.

• make -d: Tell make to dump a lot of debug information.

• make IGNORE_MAKEFILE_CHANGES=1: Do not rebuild files if the makefiles have changes.

• make SHOW_BUILD_REASON=1: Show which file triggered each rule.

• make dump-db or make -p: Dump the make database.

• make command-line: Print the real make command line used to build RebirthDB. On some old, unpatched versions of GNU make this is required to use -j.

• make debug-count: Debug the count feature.

To be able to invoke make from a subdirectory, a Makefile must exist. It usually looks like this:

OVERRIDE_GOALS ?= default-goal=<default target for this directory>
TOP := <relative path to the top of the rebirthdb source tree>
include $(TOP)/Makefile