1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2 Copyright(c) 2018 Intel Corporation.
4 Installing DPDK Using the meson build system
5 ============================================
9 For many platforms, compiling and installing DPDK should work using the
10 following set of commands::
17 This will compile DPDK in the ``build`` subdirectory, and then install the
18 resulting libraries, drivers and header files onto the system - generally
19 in /usr/local. A package-config file, ``libdpdk.pc``, for DPDK will also
20 be installed to allow ease of compiling and linking with applications.
22 After installation, to use DPDK, the necessary CFLAG and LDFLAG variables
23 can be got from pkg-config::
25 pkg-config --cflags libdpdk
26 pkg-config --libs libdpdk
28 More detail on each of these steps can be got from the following sections.
34 The ``meson`` tool is used to configure a DPDK build. On most Linux
35 distributions this can be got using the local package management system,
36 e.g. ``dnf install meson`` or ``apt-get install meson``. If meson is not
37 available as a suitable package, it can also be installed using the Python
38 3 ``pip`` tool, e.g. ``pip3 install meson``. Version 0.47.1 of meson is
39 required - if the version packaged is too old, the latest version is
40 generally available from "pip".
42 The other dependency for building is the ``ninja`` tool, which acts similar
43 to make and performs the actual build using information provided by meson.
44 Installing meson will, in many cases, also install ninja, but, if not
45 already installed, it too is generally packaged by most Linux distributions.
46 If not available as a package, it can be downloaded as source or binary from
47 https://ninja-build.org/
51 ----------------------
53 To configure a build, run the meson tool, passing the path to the directory
54 to be used for the build e.g. ``meson build``, as shown above. If calling
55 meson from somewhere other than the root directory of the DPDK project the
56 path to the root directory should be passed as the first parameter, and the
57 build path as the second. For example, to build DPDK in /tmp/dpdk-build::
59 user@host:/tmp$ meson ~user/dpdk dpdk-build
61 Meson will then configure the build based on settings in the project's
62 meson.build files, and by checking the build environment for e.g. compiler
63 properties or the presence of dependencies, such as libpcap, or openssl
64 libcrypto libraries. Once done, meson writes a ``build.ninja`` file in the
65 build directory to be used to do the build itself when ninja is called.
67 Tuning of the build is possible, both as part of the original meson call,
68 or subsequently using ``meson configure`` command (``mesonconf`` in some
69 older versions). Some options, such as ``buildtype``, or ``werror`` are
70 built into meson, while others, such as ``max_lcores``, or the list of
71 examples to build, are DPDK-specific. To have a list of all options
72 available run ``meson configure`` in the build directory.
74 Examples of adjusting the defaults when doing initial meson configuration.
75 Project-specific options are passed used -Doption=value::
77 meson --werror werrorbuild # build with warnings as errors
79 meson --buildtype=debug debugbuild # build for debugging
81 meson -Dexamples=l3fwd,l2fwd fwdbuild # build some examples as
82 # part of the normal DPDK build
84 meson -Dmax_lcores=8 smallbuild # scale build for smaller systems
86 meson -Denable_docs=true fullbuild # build and install docs
88 meson -Dmachine=default # use builder-independent baseline -march
90 meson -Ddisable_drivers=event/*,net/tap # disable tap driver and all
91 # eventdev PMDs for a smaller build
93 meson -Denable_trace_fp=true tracebuild # build with fast path traces
96 Examples of setting some of the same options using meson configure::
98 meson configure -Dwerror=true
100 meson configure -Dbuildtype=debug
102 meson configure -Dexamples=l3fwd,l2fwd
104 meson configure -Dmax_lcores=8
106 meson configure -Denable_trace_fp=true
110 once meson has been run to configure a build in a directory, it
111 cannot be run again on the same directory. Instead ``meson configure``
112 should be used to change the build settings within the directory, and when
113 ``ninja`` is called to do the build itself, it will trigger the necessary
117 machine=default uses a config that works on all supported architectures
118 regardless of the capabilities of the machine where the build is happening.
120 As well as those settings taken from ``meson configure``, other options
121 such as the compiler to use can be passed via environment variables. For
124 CC=clang meson clang-build
128 for more comprehensive overriding of compilers or other environment
129 settings, the tools for cross-compilation may be considered. However, for
130 basic overriding of the compiler etc., the above form works as expected.
134 ---------------------
136 Use ``ninja`` to perform the actual build inside the build folder
137 previously configured. In most cases no arguments are necessary.
139 Ninja accepts a number of flags which are similar to make. For example, to
140 call ninja from outside the build folder, you can use ``ninja -C build``.
141 Ninja also runs parallel builds by default, but you can limit this using
142 the ``-j`` flag, e.g. ``ninja -j1 -v`` to do the build one step at a time,
143 printing each command on a new line as it runs.
146 Installing the Compiled Files
147 ------------------------------
149 Use ``ninja install`` to install the required DPDK files onto the system.
150 The install prefix defaults to ``/usr/local`` but can be used as with other
151 options above. The environment variable ``DESTDIR`` can be used to adjust
152 the root directory for the install, for example when packaging.
154 With the base install directory, the individual directories for libraries
155 and headers are configurable. By default, the following will be the
158 headers -> /usr/local/include
159 libraries -> /usr/local/lib64
160 drivers -> /usr/local/lib64/dpdk/drivers
161 libdpdk.pc -> /usr/local/lib64/pkgconfig
163 For the drivers, these will also be symbolically linked into the library
164 install directory, so that ld.so can find them in cases where one driver may
165 depend on another, e.g. a NIC PMD depending upon the PCI bus driver. Within
166 the EAL, the default search path for drivers will be set to the configured
167 driver install path, so dynamically-linked applications can be run without
168 having to pass in ``-d /path/to/driver`` options for standard drivers.
174 To cross-compile DPDK on a desired target machine we can use the following
177 meson cross-build --cross-file <target_machine_configuration>
179 For example if the target machine is arm64 we can use the following
182 meson arm-build --cross-file config/arm/arm64_armv8_linux_gcc
184 where config/arm/arm64_armv8_linux_gcc contains settings for the compilers
185 and other build tools to be used, as well as characteristics of the target
188 Using the DPDK within an Application
189 -------------------------------------
191 To compile and link against DPDK within an application, pkg-config should
192 be used to query the correct parameters. Examples of this are given in the
193 makefiles for the example applications included with DPDK. They demonstrate
194 how to link either against the DPDK shared libraries, or against the static
195 versions of the same.
197 From examples/helloworld/Makefile::
199 PC_FILE := $(shell pkg-config --path libdpdk)
200 CFLAGS += -O3 $(shell pkg-config --cflags libdpdk)
201 LDFLAGS_SHARED = $(shell pkg-config --libs libdpdk)
202 LDFLAGS_STATIC = $(shell pkg-config --static --libs libdpdk)
204 build/$(APP)-shared: $(SRCS-y) Makefile $(PC_FILE) | build
205 $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(SRCS-y) -o $@ $(LDFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS_SHARED)
207 build/$(APP)-static: $(SRCS-y) Makefile $(PC_FILE) | build
208 $(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(SRCS-y) -o $@ $(LDFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS_STATIC)