README

Where to find complete Redis documentation?
-------------------------------------------

This README is just a fast "quick start" document. You can find more detailed
documentation here:

1) http://code.google.com/p/redis
2) Check the 'doc' directory. doc/README.html is a good starting point :)

Building Redis
--------------

It is as simple as:

    % make

Redis is just a single binary, but if you want to install it you can use
the "make install" target that will copy the binary to /usr/local/bin
by default. You can also use "make PREFIX=/some/other/directory install"
if you wish to use a different destination.

You can run a 32 bit Redis binary using:

    % make 32bit

After you build Redis is a good idea to test it (which require Tcl), using:

    % make test

Buliding using tcmalloc
-----------------------

tcmalloc is a fast and space efficient implementation (for little objects)
of malloc(). Compiling Redis with it can improve performance and memory
usage. You can read more about it here:

http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html

In order to compile Redis with tcmalloc support, install tcmalloc on your system
and then use:

    % make USE_TCMALLOC=yes

Note that you can pass any other target to make, as long as you append
USE_TCMALLOC=yes at the end.

Running Redis
-------------

To run Redis with the default configuration just type:

    % cd src
    % ./redis-server
    
If you want to provide your redis.conf, you have to run it using an additional
parameter (the path of the configuration file):

    % cd src
    % ./redis-server /path/to/redis.conf

Playing with Redis
------------------

You can use redis-cli to play with Redis. Start a redis-server instance,
then in another terminal try the following:

    % cd src
    % ./redis-cli
    redis> ping
    PONG
    redis> set foo bar
    OK
    redis> get foo
    "bar"
    redis> incr mycounter
    (integer) 1
    redis> incr mycounter
    (integer) 2
    redis> 

You can find the list of all the available commands here:

    http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/CommandReference

Enjoy!