For the base system you only need cmake3, git, a C99 compiler and essential build tools (make and some standard Unix tools; alternatively ninja and clang are also supported but not described here):
sudo apt-get install cmake git build-essential
Or on RPM based systems (CentOS):
sudo dnf install -y cmake git gcc-c++ make
Or on macOS, most of the build tools can be obtained by installing Xcode (from the App Store). Other required tools may be installed using brew. First install brew as described on their website. Then issue the following command to get cmake to complete the basic requirements:
brew install cmake git
Run the following commands to compile Elektra with non-experimental parts where your system happens to fulfil the dependences (continue reading the rest of the document for details about these steps):
git clone https://github.com/ElektraInitiative/libelektra.git
cd libelektra
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. # watch output to see if everything needed is included
ccmake .. # optional: overview of the available build settings (needs cmake-curses-gui)
cmake --build build -- -j5
cmake --build build --target run_nokdbtests # optional: run tests
The last line only runs tests not writing into your system.
See TESTING for how to run more tests.
Afterwards you can use sudo make install && sudo ldconfig
to install Elektra.
See INSTALL for more information about
installation of self-compiled Elektra (such as how to uninstall it).
Note: You do not need to install the dependencies listed here. If they are not available, some of the functionality gets disabled automatically. The core of Elektra never depends on other libraries.
To build documentation you need doxygen (we recommend 1.8.8+), graphviz and ronn-ng:
apt-get install doxygen graphviz
gem install ronn-ng -v 0.10.1.pre1
Or on RPM based systems:
sudo yum install -y doxygen docbook-style-xsl graphviz ruby
gem install ronn-ng -v 0.10.1.pre1
Or on macOS using brew:
brew install doxygen graphviz
brew install ruby # in case ruby is not already installed
gem install ronn-ng -v 0.10.1.pre1
To build PDF documentation you need pdflatex
with
apt-get install pdflatex \
texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-extra \
texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra \
texlive-math-extra
For dependencies of plugins, please refer to the README.md of the respective plugin.
A small subset of build dependencies to get you started:
- for CentOS:
sudo yum install -y libdb-devel GConf2-devel libxml2-devel yajl-devel \
libcurl-devel augeas-devel libgit2-devel lua-devel swig python34-devel python-devel \
java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel jna ruby-devel byacc
- for Ubuntu:
sudo apt install -y libxerces-c-dev libxml2-dev libyajl-dev \
libcurl4-gnutls-dev libaugeas-dev git git-buildpackage dh-lua liblua5.2-dev \
dh-python python3-all python3-dev default-jdk libjna-java ruby-dev flex bison
Elektra uses cmake3. Tested are cmake version 3.0.2 and 3.7.2 among others.
To configure Elektra graphically (with curses) run (..
belongs to command):
mkdir build && cd build && ccmake ..
and press c
to configure the cache (might be necessary multiple times, and once on the first time in case you don‘t see any settings).
After applying the desired settings, press g
to generate the make file.
All options described here, can also be used with cmake
rather than
ccmake
(..
does also here belong to the command):
mkdir build && cd build && cmake -D<OPTION1>=<VAR1> -D<OPTION2>=<VAR2> ..
For information what you can use as OPTION1
and OPTION2
, see above.
Note: You have to enclose a value with quotes ""
if it contains a semicolon (;
).
E.g.:
cmake -DPLUGINS="dump;resolver;yajl;list;spec" ..
Some scripts in the folder of the same name may help you running cmake.
You should be able to compile Elektra with any C99 compiler. For a list of compilers we test with have a look at:
- our Docker containers orchestrated by our Jenkinsfile being built on our build server
- Cirrus
- GitHub Actions
Here is an additional list of compilers used by developers (for build servers, see links above):
Compiler | Version | Target |
---|---|---|
gcc | gcc (Debian 8.3.0-6) 8.3.0 | x86_64-linux-gnu |
gcc | gcc (GCC) 11.1.1 20210531 (Red Hat 11.1.1-3) | x86_64-redhat-linux |
gcc | gcc-11 (Homebrew GCC 11.1.0_1) 11.1.0 | x86_64-apple-darwin20 |
clang | clang version 12.0.0 (Fedora 12.0.0-0.3.rc1.fc34) | x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu |
clang | Apple clang version 12.0.5 (clang-1205.0.22.9) | x86_64-apple-darwin20.5.0 |
(¹) OpenBSD ships an old version of GCC per default, which can not compile Elektra. A manual installation of egcc/eg++ is required. Note that not every OpenBSD mirror provides the eg++ package. Elektra builds are confirmed with egcc/eg++ 4.9.4 in OpenBSD 6.3. The packages are called gcc and g++. Compile with
CC=/usr/local/bin/egcc CXX=/usr/local/bin/eg++
.
To change the compiler, use cmake settings CMAKE_C_COMPILER
and CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER
.
To use gcc-4.3 for example
cmake -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-4.3 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-4.3 ..
To change the compiler with ccmake
, you may need to toggle advanced options (key t
).
Some options, i.e. PLUGINS
, BINDINGS
and TOOLS
are either:
- a list of elements separated with a semicolon (
;
) (note that shells typically need;
to be escaped) - a special uppercase element that gets replaced by a list of elements, that are:
ALL
to include all elements (except elements with unfulfilled dependencies)NODEP
to include all elements without dependencies
- elements prefixed with a minus symbol (
-
) to exclude an element
Examples for this are especially in the subsection PLUGINS
below, but they work in the
same fashion for BINDINGS
and TOOLS
.
Read about available plugins here.
Because the core of elektra is minimal, plugins are needed to actually read and write to configuration files (storage plugins), commit the changes (resolver plugins, also takes care about how the configuration files are named) and also do many other tasks related to configuration.
The minimal set of plugins you should add:
- dump is the default storage.
If you remove it, make sure you add another one and set
KDB_DEFAULT_STORAGE
to it. - resolver is the default resolver.
If you remove it, make sure you add another one and set
KDB_DEFAULT_RESOLVER
to it. - list delegates work to a list of plugins.
Needed for tests. (Required with
ENABLE_TESTING
.) - spec copies metadata from spec namespace
to other namespaces.
Needed for tests. (Required with
ENABLE_TESTING
, except on mingw.) - sync is very useful to not lose any data.
If you do not want to include it, make sure to set
/sw/elektra/kdb/#0/current/plugins
to a value not containing sync (e.g. an empty value). See kdb-mount(1).
By default CMake adds nearly all plugins if the dependencies are present. Only experimental plugins will be omitted by default:
-DPLUGINS="ALL;-EXPERIMENTAL"
To add also experimental plugins, you can use:
-DPLUGINS=ALL
Note that plugins are only built if their dependencies are satisfied. So make sure to install all dependencies you need before you run
cmake
. For example, to include the pluginyajl
, make surelibyajl-dev
is installed.
To add all plugins except some plugins you can use:
-DPLUGINS="ALL;-plugin1;-plugin2"
For example, if you want all plugins except the jni plugin you would use:
-DPLUGINS="ALL;-jni"
To add all plugins not having additional dependencies (they need only POSIX), you can use
-DPLUGINS=NODEP
Note, that every infos/provides
and infos/status
field written uppercase can
be used to select plugins that way (see README of individual plugins).
You also can combine any of these fields
and add/remove other plugins to/from it, e.g. to include all plugins without deps,
that provide storage (except yajl
) and are maintained, but not include all plugins
that are experimental, you would use:
-DPLUGINS="NODEP;STORAGE;-yajl;MAINTAINED;-EXPERIMENTAL"
The inclusion is determined by following preferences:
- if the plugin is explicit excluded with
-plugin
- if the plugin is explicit included with
plugin
- if the plugin is excluded via a category
-CATEGORY
- if the plugin is included via a category
CATEGORY
- plugins are excluded if they are not mentioned at all (neither by category nor by name)
Note, that changing PLUGINS
will not modify the defaults used
after Elektra was installed. For this endeavour you need to change:
-DKDB_DEFAULT_RESOLVER=resolver
and
-DKDB_DEFAULT_STORAGE=dump
The default resolver and storage will write to KDB_DB_FILE
and KDB_DB_INIT
(for bootstrapping).
Obviously, you can pass the exact list of plugins you want, e.g.:
-DPLUGINS="resolver;sync;dump"
Some plugins are compile-time configurable. Then you can choose which
features are compiled in or out. This is especially important in the
bootstrapping phase, because then only the compiled in configuration
applies. To compile-time-configure a plugin, you just pass a underscore
(_
) and flags after the name of the plugin.
The resolver for example distinguish between 3 different kind of flags:
-DPLUGINS="resolver_baseflags_userflags_systemflags"
Following baseflags are available:
c
for debugging conflictsf
for enabling file lockingm
for enabling mutex locking
The user flags are (the order matters!):
p
use passwd/ldap to lookup home directory usinggetpwuid_r
h
use the environment variable HOMEu
use the environment variable USERb
use the built-in default cmake variableKDB_DB_HOME
The system flags are (the order matters!):
x
use the environment variableXDG_CONFIG_DIRS
(:
are interpreted as part of filename, no searching is done!) This option is not recommended (unless for testing), because it allows users to fake system configuration.b
use the built-in default cmake variableKDB_DB_SYSTEM
- note: if a path that begins with a slash (
/
) is chosen, the system flags are irrelevant and the path is taken as-is.
For example, one may use:
-DPLUGINS="resolver_lm_uhpb_b"
To add resolver_l_h_b
you need to specify
-DPLUGINS="resolver;resolver_l_h_b"
You can add resolver with any combination of the flags, even if they are
not available in ALL
.
Tools are used to add extra functionality to Elektra.
The flag used to specify which tools are compiled is
-DTOOLS
, thus flag works similarly to the -DPLUGINS
flag,
but is more limited in its functionality (which does not
matter, because there are not so many tools).
To add all non-experimental tools, you can use::
-DTOOLS=ALL
Note that the behavior is different to PLUGINS which includes all PLUGINS if ALL is used.
To add all tools except of race, you can use:
-DTOOLS="ALL;-race"
To specify specific tools you can use, e.g.:
-DTOOLS=qt-gui;kdb
Bindings are used in a like as PLUGINS
.
For example, to build all maintained bindings and exclude experimental bindings
you can use:
-DBINDINGS=MAINTAINED;-EXPERIMENTAL
The SWIG executable may be specified with:
-DSWIG_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/swig3.0
If this option is not used, cmake will find the first occurrence of
swig
in your environment's path.
Some bindings provide different APIs (and not a different language), e.g:
gsettings
INTERCEPT
withintercept_fs
andintercept_env
IO
withio_uv
To not add such APIs, but only swig
bindings and cpp
, you can use:
-DBINDINGS="SWIG;cpp"
For a list of available bindings see binding's README.md.
Debug
, Release
or RelWithDebInfo
See help bar at bottom of ccmake
for that option or:
http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Useful_Variables
BUILD_SHARED
is the typical build you want to have on systems that support dlopen
.
It can be used for desktop builds, but also embedded systems as long as they support
dlopen
, for example, BUILD_SHARED
is used on OpenWRT with musl
.
Using BUILD_SHARED
every plugin is its own shared object.
BUILD_FULL
links together all parts of Elektra as a single shared .so
library.
This is ideal if shared libraries are available, but you want to avoid dlopen
.
Some tests only work with BUILD_FULL
, so you might turn it on to get full
coverage.
BUILD_STATIC
also links together all parts but as static .a
library.
It is only useful for systems without dlopen
or if the overhead of
dlopen
needs to be avoided.
All three forms of builds can be intermixed freely.
For example, to enable shared and full build, but disable static build, one would use:
cmake -DBUILD_SHARED=ON -DBUILD_FULL=ON -DBUILD_STATIC=OFF ..
Build documentation with doxygen (API) and ronn-ng (man pages).
If ronn-ng is not found, already compiled man pages will be used instead.
Note: Turning off building the documentation, also turns off installing the documentation, see https://issues.libelektra.org/2522 Then no man pages are available.
As developer you should enable ENABLE_DEBUG
and ENABLE_LOGGER
:
ENABLE_DEBUG
:- enables assertions
- adds RTLD_NODELETE so that debugger finds symbols even after dlclose
ENABLE_LOGGER
: enables logging By default no logging will take place, see CODING for how to get log messages.
Continue reading testing for more information about testing.
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
defaults to /usr/local
.
So by default most files will installed below /usr/local
.
Exceptions to this are files handled by INSTALL_SYSTEM_FILES.
Edit that cache entry to change that behavior. Also called system prefix within the documentation.
If you want to create a package afterwards it is ok to use
paths that you can write to (e.g. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/username/
)
Lets you install libraries into architecture specific folder.
E.g. for 32/64 bit systems you might install libraries under
lib64
. Set LIB_SUFFIX
to 64
to achieve exactly that.
So the system library folder will be CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/lib64
then.
By default include folders will be installed below
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/include/elektra
.
This entry let you change the elektra.
If the entry is empty, the include files will be
installed directly to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/include
.
Similar to above, but with the plugins. Default is:
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/lib${LIB_SUFFIX}/elektra
It can be also left empty to install plugins next
to other libraries.
This value specifies the root directory of a local copy of the Google Test framework.
- If it is empty (
""
), then the build system will download a copy of Google Test into the build directory. - Otherwise the build system will search for the file
CMakeLists.txt
in the top level directory ofGTEST_ROOT
. If this file exists, then the build system will use the sources files atGTEST_ROOT
to translate tests that use Google Test.
It can be provided as CMake or environment variable. If both options are provided the value passed via CMake takes precedence.
It is recommended that you browse through all of the options using ccmake
.
Afterwards press c
again (maybe multiple times until all variables are
resolved) and then g
to generate. Finally press e
to exit.
Specifies that the build tools, i.e. elektra-export-symbols
and elektra-export-symbols
are installed (by default off). Is needed for cross-compilation.
Some of Elektra’s targets require to be installed into specific folders in the file system hierarchy to work properly.
This variable is disabled by default, since it requires the install target to have the
rights to write into the corresponding folders. Set -DINSTALL_SYSTEM_FILES=ON
,
if you also want to install the files listed below.
If you do not have root rights you can also copy the files manually to your user folder.
Currently the installed system files are as following:
Module | Description | Install Path |
---|---|---|
bash-completion | bash tab auto completion file | completionsdir from pkg-config (¹) |
zsh-completion | zsh tab auto completion file | /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions |
GIR | introspection file for bindings | INTROSPECTION_GIRDIR from pkg-config |
GSettings | GSettings backend module | GIO_MODULE_DIR from pkg-config |
(¹) Or
/usr/share/bash-completion/completions
as fallback.
In order to keep the binaries as small as possible this flag allows to trade memory for speed.
To build the source use:
make
You can pass:
-j
for parallel buildsVERBOSE=1
to see the invocations of the compiler
Continue by reading INSTALL.
You can build Elektra using Code::Blocks under Gentoo:
Precondition: Make sure you have a compiler, xml2 (for kdb tool) and xsl (see later) installed. cmake configure will help you with that, it will make sure you don't forget something essential.
For Most Linux system all you have to do is open up a console and
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -G 'CodeBlocks - Unix Makefiles'
make package
Note 1: You can use other editor if you like just type cmake at the console to get a list of option you can pass to cmake as long as well as a list of what code editor project cmake can create.
Note 2:
For Unix if you have nCurses install you can run ccmake
to set important option after
running cmake like to enable debug symbol.
Note 3: for Gentoo is recommend to emerge sys-apps/lsb-release to name the package right even thou not required.
On multiarch (multiple architectures installed in one system), you need to set LIB_SUFFIX
.
For example, if you want to have the binaries in lib64
and lib32
, you
would use for the libraries to be installed in ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/lib64
:
-DLIB_SUFFIX="64"
If there is a directory for different architectures, simply prepend an /
.
For example, for Debian:
-DLIB_SUFFIX="/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)"
By default Elektra uses RPATH
to hide its plugins. This makes it obvious that
external applications should not link against plugins. Instead every application
should use the elektraModulesLoad()
API to load Elektra’s modules.
The folder where the plugins are located is a subdirectory of where the
libraries are installed. The name of the subdirectory can be specified
using TARGET_PLUGIN_FOLDER
and is elektra
by default. You might
want to encode Elektra’s SOVERSION
into the folders name, if you want
different major versions of Elektra be co-installable.
Elektra’s use case for RPATH
is considered acceptable, so we recommend to use it
because:
- plugins do not clutter the library folder nor the
ld.so.cache
- it works well with multiarch (
LIB_SUFFIX
is also honored for plugins) - which plugins are used should be decided at mount-time and be globally available in the
same way for every application.
RPATH
supports exactly that because it even overridesLD_LIBRARY_PATH
.
Unfortunately, there are also drawbacks:
- it makes Elektra non-relocatable (
RPATH
is decided at compile-time, so you cannot simply move Elektra’s installations within the file system (e.g. from/usr/local
to/usr
) - it requires modern
ld.so
implementations that honorRPATH
from libraries. This is the case for mostlibc
implementations including Linux and macOS, but not for, e.g.,musl
.
If you want Elektra to not use RPATH
, you can add:
-DTARGET_PLUGIN_FOLDER="" -DCMAKE_SKIP_INSTALL_RPATH=ON
Then all plugins are directly installed to the library directory and loaded
like other libraries (in any of ld.so
paths).
Alternatively, which gives you the advantage not to clutter the main library path,
is to add the plugin folder in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/elektra
. Note that it still allows
applications to link against plugins.
Please enable EPEL https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
# Install EPEL for RHEL 7
curl -o epel-release-7-8.noarch.rpm \
http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-8.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh epel-release-7-8.noarch.rpm
sudo yum update
For Bindings swig3 is recommended. swig2 only works on some distributions. E.g., for Debian Jessie the bindings will crash.
At time of writing, no swig 3 was available, not even in EPEL. Thus you need to install swig3 manually:
curl https://codeload.github.com/swig/swig/tar.gz/rel-3.0.10 | tar xz
cd swig-rel-3.0.10 && ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make
sudo make install
cd ..
Also, no ronn-ng was available, thus you need to do:
gem install ronn-ng -v 0.10.1.pre1
In Elektra cross compiling needs two steps. If you get errors like
elektra-export-errors_EXE_LOC
not found, go on reading.
In the first step, you need to compile Elektra for the host architecture and install the build tools:
cmake -DINSTALL_BUILD_TOOLS=ON \
-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(STAGING_DIR_HOST) \
..
cmake --build . -- -j5
cmake --build . --target install
Where $(STAGING_DIR_HOST)
must be a directory to be found in the later
build process. In particular, $(STAGING_DIR_HOST)/bin
must be in a
directory found by a later find_program
.
Then you need to compile Elektra again, but for the target architecture.
Now, the build tools such as elektra-export-errors
should be found in
the $(STAGING_DIR_HOST)/bin
where they were installed before.
For reference, you can look into the OpenWRT Elektra Makefile and the CMake in OpenWRT.