RocksDB make install

Question

From the (slightly) outdated documentation on pyrocksdb, it says:

"If you do not want to call make install export the following enviroment variables:"

$ export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=${CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH}:`pwd`/include
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:`pwd`
$ export LIBRARY_PATH=${LIBRARY_PATH}:`pwd`

But the installation instructions for RocksDB do not seem to mention any sort of install target!

Is there an accepted procedure for installing RocksDB from source?

---

My thoughts are to just copy the contents of the include directory from the rocksdb directory into somewhere like /usr/local/include and copy the librocksdb.so and librocksdb.a files into /usr/local/lib. Is this an acceptable method?

Note: The method of exporting environment variables was less preferable to me, as I built rocksdb in a directory inside my home folder--I am hoping for a cleaner solution (interpret that how you want).

Answer 1

RocksDB recently has make install. If you use the latest version, you should be able to do make install in RocksDB.

Answer 2

There is no install target in the current Makefile.

This breaks the long-established conventions for writing Makefiles (or pretty-much every other build system...); it should be considered a defect.

Without spending a lot of time analysing I can't be sure, but the install target should be something like:

prefix=/usr/local
bindir=$(prefix)/bin
# Normally you'd write a macro for this; 'lib' for 32-bit, 'lib64' for 64...
libdir=$(prefix)/lib64
includedir=$(prefix)/include

# Define this to be the directory(s) the headers are installed into.
# This should not include the 'include' element:
#    include/rocksdb/stuff -> rocksdb/stuff
HEADER_DIRS=...

# Define this so all paths are relative to both the $CWD/include directory...
# so include/rocksdb/foo.h -> HEADER_FILES=rocksdb/foo.h
HEADER_FILES=...

.PHONY: install
install: $(TOOLS) $(LIBRARY) $(SHARED) $(MAKEFILES)
     mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(bindir)
     mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(libdir)
     mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)
     for tool in $(TOOLS); do \
         install -m 755 $$tool $(DESTDIR)$(bindir); \
     done
     # No, libraries should NOT be executable on Linux.
     install -m 644 $(LIBRARY) $(DESTDIR)$(libdir)
     install -m 644 $(SHARED3) $(DESTDIR)$(libdir)
     ln -s $(SHARED3) $(DESTDIR)$(libdir)/$(SHARED2)
     ln -s $(SHARED2) $(DESTDIR)$(libdir)/$(SHARED1)
     for header_dir in $(HEADER_DIRS); do \
         mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/$$header_dir; \
     done
     for header in $(HEADER_FILES); do \
         install -m 644 include/$$header $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/$$header; \
     done

This will then allow you to install the files into /usr/local, by simply doing:

make install

However, the reason it's so heavily parameterised, is so you can change the destination folder, without having to modify the Makefile. For example, to change the destination to /usr, you simply do:

make prefix=/usr install

Alternatively, if you'd like to test the installation process, without messing with your filesystem, you could do:

make DESTDIR=/tmp/rocksdb_install_test prefix=/usr install

This would put the files into /tmp/rocksdb_install_test/usr which you can then check to see if they're where you want them to be... when you're happy, you can just do rm -Rf /tmp/rocksdb_install_test to cleanup.

The variables I've used are essential for packaging with RPM or DEB.