Compiling ArangoDB from scratch

The following sections describe how to compile and build the ArangoDB from scratch. ArangoDB will compile on most Linux and Mac OS X systems. We assume that you use the GNU C/C++ compiler or clang/clang++ to compile the source. ArangoDB has been tested with the GNU C/C++ compiler and clang/clang++, but should be able to compile with any Posix-compliant, C++11-enabled compiler. Please let us know whether you successfully compiled it with another C/C++ compiler.

By default, cloning the github repository will checkout devel. This version contains the development version of the ArangoDB. Use this branch if you want to make changes to the ArangoDB source.

Devel Version

Note: a separate blog article is available that describes how to compile ArangoDB from source on Ubuntu.

Basic System Requirements

Verify that your system contains

• the GNU C/C++ compilers “gcc” and “g++” and the standard C/C++ libraries, with support for C++11. You will need version gcc 4.9.0 or higher. For “clang” and “clang++”, you will need at least version 3.6.
• the GNU autotools (autoconf, automake)
• GNU make
• the GNU scanner generator FLEX, at least version 2.3.35
• the GNU parser generator BISON, at least version 2.4
• Python, version 2 or 3
• the OpenSSL library, version 1.0.1g or higher (development package)
• the GNU readline library (development package)
• Go, at least version 1.4.1

Most Linux systems already supply RPMs or DPKGs for these packages. Some distributions, for example Ubuntu 12.04 or Centos 5, provide only very out-dated versions of compilers, FLEX, BISON, and/or the V8 engine. In that case you need to compile newer versions of the programs and/or libraries.

When compiling with special configure options, you may need the following extra libraries:

• the Boost test framework library (only when using configure option --enable-maintainer-mode)

Download the Source

Download the latest source using git:

unix> git clone git://github.com/arangodb/arangodb.git

This will automatically clone the devel branch.

Note: if you only plan to compile ArangoDB locally and do not want to modify or push any changes, you can speed up cloning substantially by using the --single-branch and --depth parameters for the clone command as follows:

unix> git clone --single-branch --depth 1 git://github.com/arangodb/arangodb.git

Setup

Switch into the ArangoDB directory

unix> cd ArangoDB

In order to generate the configure script, execute

unix> make setup

This will call aclocal, autoheader, automake, and autoconf in the correct order.

Configure

In order to configure the build environment please execute

unix> ./configure

to setup the makefiles. This will check the various system characteristics and installed libraries.

Please note that it may be required to set the --host and --target variables when running the configure command. For example, if you compile on MacOS, you should add the following options to the configure command:

--host=x86_64-apple-darwin --target=x86_64-apple-darwin

The host and target values for other architectures vary.

If you also plan to make changes to the source code of ArangoDB, add the following option to the configure command: --enable-maintainer-mode. Using this option, you can make changes to the lexer and parser files and some other source files that will generate other files. Enabling this option will add extra dependencies to BISON, FLEX, and PYTHON. These external tools then need to be available in the correct versions on your system.

The following configuration options exist:

--enable-relative

This will make relative paths be used in the compiled binaries and scripts. It allows to run ArangoDB from the compile directory directly, without the need for a make install command and specifying much configuration parameters. When used, you can start ArangoDB using this command:

bin/arangod /tmp/database-dir

ArangoDB will then automatically use the configuration from file etc/relative/arangod.conf.

--enable-all-in-one-etcd

This tells the build system to use the bundled version of ETCD. This is the default and recommended.

--enable-internal-go

This tells the build system to use Go binaries located in the 3rdParty directory. Note that ArangoDB does not ship with Go binaries, and that the Go binaries must be copied into this directory manually.

--enable-maintainer-mode

This tells the build system to use BISON and FLEX to regenerate the parser and scanner files. If disabled, the supplied files will be used so you cannot make changes to the parser and scanner files. You need at least BISON 2.4.1 and FLEX 2.5.35. This option also allows you to make changes to the error messages file, which is converted to js and C header files using Python. You will need Python 2 or 3 for this. Furthermore, this option enables additional test cases to be executed in a make unittests run. You also need to install the Boost test framework for this.

Additionally, turning on the maintainer mode will turn on a lot of assertions in the code.

--enable-failure-tests

This option activates additional code in the server that intentionally makes the server crash or misbehave (e.g. by pretending the system ran out of memory). This option is useful for writing tests.

--enable-v8-debug

Builds a debug version of the V8 library. This is useful only when working on the V8 integration inside ArangoDB.

--enable-tcmalloc

Links arangod and the client tools against the tcmalloc library installed on the system. Note that when this option is set, a tcmalloc library must be present and exposed under the name libtcmalloc, libtcmalloc_minimal or libtcmalloc_debug.

Please also make sure that relevant compiler optimizations flags are set. This can be achieved by setting the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables when invoking the configure command. For example, to build with optimizations use:

CFLAGS="-O3" CXXFLAGS="-O3" ./configure ...

Please also note that specific compilers may need specific configuration in order to make ArangoDB compile and run. For example, g++ 6.0 and higher by default perform some optimizations that are unsafe for V8 and may make it crash. For g++ 6 or higher, the following environment variables need to be set:

CFLAGS="-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks" CXXFLAGS="-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks" ./configure ...

Compiling Go

Users F21 and duralog told us that some systems don’t provide an update-to-date version of go. This seems to be the case for at least Ubuntu 12 and 13. To install go on these system, you may follow the instructions provided here. For other systems, you may follow the instructions here.

To make ArangoDB use a specific version of go, you may copy the go binaries into the 3rdParty/go-32 or 3rdParty/go-64 directories of ArangoDB (depending on your architecture), and then tell ArangoDB to use this specific go version by using the --enable-internal-go configure option.

User duralog provided some the following script to pull the latest release version of go into the ArangoDB source directory and build it:

cd ArangoDB
hg clone -u release https://code.google.com/p/go 3rdParty/go-64 && \
  cd 3rdParty/go-64/src && \
  ./all.bash

# now that go is installed, run your configure with --enable-internal-go
./configure --enable-internal-go

Compile

Compile the programs (server, client, utilities) by executing

make

This will compile ArangoDB and create a binary of the server in

./bin/arangod

Test

Create an empty directory

unix> mkdir /tmp/database-dir

Check the binary by starting it using the command line.

unix> ./bin/arangod -c etc/relative/arangod.conf --server.endpoint tcp://127.0.0.1:8529 /tmp/database-dir

This will start up the ArangoDB and listen for HTTP requests on port 8529 bound to IP address 127.0.0.1. You should see the startup messages similar to the following:

2013-10-14T12:47:29Z [29266] INFO ArangoDB xxx ... 
2013-10-14T12:47:29Z [29266] INFO using endpoint 'tcp://127.0.0.1.8529' for non-encrypted requests
2013-10-14T12:47:30Z [29266] INFO Authentication is turned off
2013-10-14T12:47:30Z [29266] INFO ArangoDB (version xxx) is ready for business. Have fun!

If it fails with a message about the database directory, please make sure the database directory you specified exists and can be written into.

Use your favorite browser to access the URL

http://127.0.0.1:8529/_api/version

This should produce a JSON object like

{"server" : "arango", "version" : "..."}

as result.

Re-building ArangoDB after an update

To stay up-to-date with changes made in the main ArangoDB repository, you will need to pull the changes from it and re-run make.

Normally, this will be as simple as follows:

unix> git pull
unix> make

From time to time there will be bigger structural changes in ArangoDB, which may render the old Makefiles invalid. Should this be the case and make complains about missing files etc., the following commands should fix it:

unix> rm -rf lib/*/.deps arangod/*/.deps arangosh/*/.deps Makefile
unix> make setup
unix> ./configure <your configure options go here>
unix> make

In order to reset everything and also recompile all 3rd party libraries, issue the following commands:

unix> make superclean
unix> git checkout -- .
unix> make setup
unix> ./configure <your configure options go here>
unix> make

This will clean up ArangoDB and the 3rd party libraries, and rebuild everything.

If you forgot your previous configure options, you can look them up with

unix> head config.log

before issuing make superclean (as make superclean also removes the file config.log).

Sometimes you can get away with the less intrusive commands.

Install

Install everything by executing

make install

You must be root to do this or at least have write permission to the corresponding directories.

The server will by default be installed in

/usr/local/sbin/arangod

The configuration file will be installed in

/usr/local/etc/arangodb/arangod.conf

The database will be installed in

/usr/local/var/lib/arangodb

The ArangoShell will be installed in

/usr/local/bin/arangosh

Note: The installation directory will be different if you use one of the precompiled packages. Please check the default locations of your operating system, e. g. /etc and /var/lib.

When upgrading from a previous version of ArangoDB, please make sure you inspect ArangoDB’s log file after an upgrade. It may also be necessary to start ArangoDB with the --upgrade parameter once to perform required upgrade or initialization tasks.