leveldb-build

Collection of scripts to build snappy, leveldb and levigo with GNU toolchain

What is it

At the time I decided to set this project up, it is not a breeze to build Google's LevelDB itself, and when it comes to build it with Snappy, things become more complicated. More of it when you have to use LevelDB in your project with language bindings.

This is a collection of scripts to facilitate and automate the process of building snappy-enabled LevelDB and various language bindings.

The libraries that are built with these scripts are not installed system-wide. Instead, an isolated environment is set up where you can experiment with certain versions of these libraries and their bindings.

How to use

In short

./ctl/setup
source ./ctl/go-env

go get github.com/jmhodges/levigo
go test github.com/jmhodges/levigo

mkdir -p ./src/project
cd !$

And start hacking ;)

Detailed description

This collection of scripts is intended to be used with GNU toolchain. For specific commands that must be installed on your system, see "Prerequisites" section below.

Obtain the collection of scripts in a usual way: git clone https://github.com/milaz/leveldb-build.git

Enter the directory: cd leveldb-build

Issue the command that fetches and builds the latest LevelDB with Snappy support:

./ctl/setup

Now, after the libraries are built, you can set up environment for Go development. Issue a source ./ctl/go-env in your shell, and all subsequent commands in that shell will use this directory as a Go Workspace, and also will use the correct locations of LevelDB shared library and header files.

After that, getting and testing Levigo is done in a usual way:

go get github.com/jmhodges/levigo
go test github.com/jmhodges/levigo

Next time you open a shell and want to continue the development, change directory to leveldb-build and issue a source ./ctl/go-env command.

Also, you can set up as many copies of leveldb-build as you wish. Just issue ./ctl/setup in the copy, and you are ready to go.

Prerequisites

You must have SVN and Git so that setup script can fetch Snappy and LevelDB. Other than that, the usual GNU toolchain is required: GNU Compiler Collection, libtool, automake, autoconf, make.

To do

Presently, only Levigo is supported. More language bindings to be expected in the future.

Credits

In discussion of LevelDB issue #27, Alessio Treglia, Kim Altintop and Jeff Hodges proposed patches that allow building LevelDB as a shared library.

I found instructions by Hiram Chirino very helpful to get going on building LevelDB with Snappy support.

Finally, at LevelDB issue #94, JT Olds pointed out that Snappy is not linked to the resulting libleveldb.so. Sadly, while he proposed the patch, it is left without due attention. That leads to a lot of strange situations, e.g. inability to use leveldb-haskell in ghci, or having to haul Snappy sources everywhere along with LevelDB, while the latter does not export anything from the former.

The aforementioned efforts made it possible to make this small script collection. The author hopes that it will help those who want to concentrate on developing LevelDB-based programs, but are not willing to spend considerable amount of time learning the kinds of libraries and ways of linking them on *nix systems.