Building on Windows

This is a simple step-by-step explanation of how to build RocksDB (or RocksJava) and all of the 3rd-party libraries on Microsoft Windows 11 with Visual Studio 2022.

Pre-requisites

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 (Community) with "Desktop development with C++" installed
2. Power Shell
3. Java 8 - I used BellSoft Liberica JDK 8 https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/
4. CMake - I used version 3.31.6 installed from the 64bit MSI installer
5. Ccache

An easy way to install the pre-requisites is to install and use the Chocolately package manager for Windows and simply run the following from cmd.exe:

> choco install visualstudio2022-workload-nativedesktop
> choco install choco install liberica8jdkfull
> choco install cmake
> choco install ccache

Steps

Create a directory somewhere on your machine that will be used as a container for both the RocksDB source code and that of its 3rd-party dependencies, typically this is within your home directory. In these example we use C:\Users\aretter\code, from hereon in I will just refer to it as CODE_HOME; which can be set as an environment variable (in Powershell), i.e. $Env:CODE_HOME = "C:\Users\aretter\code".

There are a number of 3rd party libraries that we need to build from source first that will be linked with RocksDB. All of the following are executed from the "Developer PowerShell for VS2022":

Build GFlags

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/gflags/gflags/archive/refs/tags/v2.2.2.zip -OutFile gflags.zip
Expand-Archive gflags.zip -DestinationPath .
cd gflags-2.2.2
mkdir target
cd target
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 ..
msbuild gflags.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
msbuild gflags.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in $Env:CODE_HOME\gflags-2.2.2\target\lib\Debug\gflags_static_debug.lib or $Env:CODE_HOME\gflags-2.2.2\target\lib\Release\gflags_static.lib.

Build Snappy

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/google/snappy/archive/refs/tags/1.1.9.zip -OutFile snappy.zip
Expand-Archive snappy.zip -DestinationPath .
cd snappy-1.1.9
mkdir target
cd target
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -DCMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM=x64 -DSNAPPY_BUILD_TESTS=OFF -DSNAPPY_BUILD_BENCHMARKS=OFF ..
msbuild Snappy.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
msbuild Snappy.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in $Env:CODE_HOME\snappy-1.1.9\build\Debug\snappy.lib or $Env:CODE_HOME\snappy-1.1.9\build\Release\snappy.lib.

Build LZ4

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/lz4/lz4/archive/refs/tags/v1.9.4.zip -OutFile lz4.zip
Expand-Archive lz4.zip -DestinationPath .
cd lz4-1.9.4
mkdir target
cd target
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -S ../build/cmake 
msbuild LZ4.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
msbuild LZ4.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in $Env:CODE_HOME\lz4-1.9.4\target\Debug or $Env:CODE_HOME\lz4-1.9.4\target\Release.

Build ZLib

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/madler/zlib/releases/download/v1.3.1/zlib131.zip -OutFile zlib.zip
Expand-Archive zlib.zip -DestinationPath .
cd zlib-1.3.1
mkdir target
cd target
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -S ..
msbuild zlib.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
msbuild zlib.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in $Env:CODE_HOME\zlib-1.3.1\target\Debug\zlibstaticd.lib or $Env:CODE_HOME\zlib-1.3.1\target\Release\zlibstatic.lib.

Build ZStd

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/facebook/zstd/archive/refs/tags/v1.5.5.zip -OutFile zstd.zip
Expand-Archive zstd.zip -DestinationPath .
cd zstd-1.5.5
mkdir target
cd target
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -S ../build/cmake 
msbuild zstd.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
msbuild zstd.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in $Env:CODE_HOME\zstd-1.5.5\target\lib\Debug\zstd_static.lib or $Env:CODE_HOME\zstd-1.5.5\target\lib\Release\zstd_static.lib.

Build RocksDB

cd $Env:CODE_HOME
wget https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/archive/refs/heads/main.zip -OutFile rocksdb.zip
Expand-Archive rocksdb.zip -DestinationPath .
cd rocksdb-main

Edit the file %CODE_HOME%\rocksdb-main\thirdparty.inc to have these changes:

set(GFLAGS_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/gflags-2.2.2)
set(GFLAGS_INCLUDE ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/include)
set(GFLAGS_LIB_DEBUG ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/lib/Debug/gflags_static.lib)
set(GFLAGS_LIB_RELEASE ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/lib/Release/gflags_static.lib)

set(SNAPPY_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/snappy-1.1.9)
set(SNAPPY_INCLUDE ${SNAPPY_HOME} ${SNAPPY_HOME}/target)
set(SNAPPY_LIB_DEBUG ${SNAPPY_HOME}/target/Debug/snappy.lib)
set(SNAPPY_LIB_RELEASE ${SNAPPY_HOME}/target/Release/snappy.lib)

set(LZ4_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/lz4-1.9.4)
set(LZ4_INCLUDE ${LZ4_HOME}/lib)
set(LZ4_LIB_DEBUG ${LZ4_HOME}/target/Debug/lz4.lib)
set(LZ4_LIB_RELEASE ${LZ4_HOME}/target/Release/lz4.lib)

set(ZLIB_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/zlib-1.3.1)
set(ZLIB_INCLUDE ${ZLIB_HOME} ${ZLIB_HOME}/target )
set(ZLIB_LIB_DEBUG ${ZLIB_HOME}/target/Debug/zlibstatic.lib)
set(ZLIB_LIB_RELEASE ${ZLIB_HOME}/target/Release/zlibstatic.lib)

set(ZSTD_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/zstd-1.5.5)
set(ZSTD_INCLUDE ${ZSTD_HOME}/lib ${ZSTD_HOME}/lib/dictBuilder)
set(ZSTD_LIB_DEBUG ${ZSTD_HOME}/target/lib/Debug/zstd_static.lib)
set(ZSTD_LIB_RELEASE ${ZSTD_HOME}/target/lib/Release/zstd_static.lib)

And then finally to compile RocksDB itself:

• NOTE: The default CMake build will generate MSBuild project files which include the /arch:AVX2 flag. If you have this CPU extension instruction set, then the generated binaries will also only work on other CPU's with AVX2. If you want to create a build which has no specific CPU extensions, then you should also pass the -DPORTABLE=1 flag in the cmake arguments below.

• NOTE: The build options below include -DXPRESS=1 which enables Microsoft XPRESS compression. This requires Windows 10 or newer to work reliably and is not backwards compatible with older versions of Windows. At present we build RocksJava releases without XPRESS.

• NOTE: Optionally RocksDBJava can also be built with the option -DWITH_JNI_EXPORT_ROCKSDB=ON. This causes the RockDB C API to also be exported in the build JNI binaries. Using the option requires the MSVC dumpbin tool to be present on the path or same directory as the msvc compiler.

mkdir build
cd build
$Env:JAVA_HOME="C:\Program Files\BellSoft\LibericaJDK-8-Full"
$Env:THIRDPARTY_HOME="C:\Users\aretter\code"
$env:Path = $env:JAVA_HOME + ";" + $env:Path #CMake find(JNI) have a bug and doesn't support JAVA_HOME 
cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=20 -DJNI=1 -DGFLAGS=1 -DSNAPPY=1 -DSNAPPY_BUILD_TESTS=OFF -DSNAPPY_BUILD_BENCHMARKS=OFF -DSNAPPY_HAVE_BMI2=0 -DLZ4=1 -DZLIB=1 -DZSTD=1 -DXPRESS=1 ..
msbuild rocksdb.sln /p:Configuration=Release /m -property:Platform=x64 -target:rocksdb-shared`;rocksdbjni_test_classes`;rocksdbjni`;rocksdbjni_test_classes

Then the resulting libraries can be found in :

• Static library : build/Release/rocksdb.lib
• Dynamic library: rocksdb-shared.dll
• Java jar archive: build/java/rocksdbjni_classes.jar
• Java native library: build/java/Release/rocksdbjni.dll

Run RocksDB Java tests

The easiest way to run the tests for RocksDB Java is via ctest from build/java directory:

cd build\java
ctest -C Release -j <number of CPU cores>