Getting started

brpc prefers static linkages of deps, so that they don’t have to be installed on every machine running the app.

brpc depends on following packages:

gflags: Extensively used to define global options.
: Serializations of messages, interfaces of services.
leveldb: Required by to record RPCs for tracing.

Fedora/CentOS
MacOS

Prepare deps

Install dependencies:

If you need to statically link leveldb:

If you need to enable cpu/heap profilers in examples:

sudo apt-get install -y libgoogle-perftools-dev

If you need to run tests, install and compile libgtest-dev (which is not compiled yet):

sudo apt-get install -y cmake libgtest-dev && cd /usr/src/gtest && sudo cmake . && sudo make && sudo mv lib/libgtest* /usr/lib/ && cd -

The directory of gtest source code may be changed, try /usr/src/googletest/googletest if /usr/src/gtest is not there.

Compile brpc with config_brpc.sh

git clone brpc, cd into the repo and run

$ sh config_brpc.sh --headers=/usr/include --libs=/usr/lib
$ make

To change compiler to clang, add --cxx=clang++ --cc=clang.

To not link debugging symbols, add --nodebugsymbols and compiled binaries will be much smaller.

To use brpc with glog, add --with-glog.

To enable , install thrift first and add --with-thrift.

Run example

$ cd example/echo_c++
$ make
$ ./echo_server &
$ ./echo_client

Examples link brpc statically, if you need to link the shared version, make clean and LINK_SO=1 make

Run tests

$ cd test
$ make
$ sh run_tests.sh

Compile brpc with cmake

cmake -B build && cmake --build build -j6

To help VSCode or Emacs(LSP) to understand code correctly, add -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON to generate compile_commands.json

To change compiler to clang, overwrite environment variable CC and CXX to clang and clang++ respectively.

To not link debugging symbols, remove build/CMakeCache.txt and cmake with -DWITH_DEBUG_SYMBOLS=OFF

To use brpc with glog, cmake with -DWITH_GLOG=ON.

To enable , install thrift first and cmake with -DWITH_THRIFT=ON.

Run example with cmake

$ cd example/echo_c++
$ cmake -B build && cmake --build build -j4
$ ./echo_server &
$ ./echo_client

Examples link brpc statically, if you need to link the shared version, remove and cmake with -DLINK_SO=ON

Run tests

Prepare deps

CentOS needs to install EPEL generally otherwise many packages are not available by default.

sudo yum install epel-release

Install dependencies:

sudo yum install git gcc-c++ make openssl-devel gflags-devel protobuf-devel protobuf-compiler leveldb-devel

If you need to enable cpu/heap profilers in examples:

sudo yum install gperftools-devel

If you need to run tests, install and compile gtest-devel (which is not compiled yet):

Compile brpc with config_brpc.sh

git clone brpc, cd into the repo and run

$ sh config_brpc.sh --headers=/usr/include --libs=/usr/lib64
$ make

To not link debugging symbols, add --nodebugsymbols and compiled binaries will be much smaller.

To use brpc with glog, add --with-glog.

To enable , install thrift first and add --with-thrift.

Run example

$ cd example/echo_c++
$ make
$ ./echo_server &
$ ./echo_client

Examples link brpc statically, if you need to link the shared version, make clean and LINK_SO=1 make

Run tests

$ cd test
$ make
$ sh run_tests.sh

Compile brpc with cmake

Same with

Prepare deps

brpc builds itself to both static and shared libs by default, so it needs static and shared libs of deps to be built as well.

Take gflags as example, which does not build shared lib by default, you need to pass options to cmake to change the behavior:

$ cmake . -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=1 -DBUILD_STATIC_LIBS=1
$ make

Compile brpc

Keep on with the gflags example, let ../gflags_dev be where gflags is cloned.

git clone brpc. cd into the repo and run

Here we pass multiple paths to --headers and --libs to make the script search for multiple places. You can also group all deps and brpc into one directory, then pass the directory to –headers/–libs which actually search all subdirectories recursively and will find necessary files.

To change compiler to clang, add --cxx=clang++ --cc=clang.

To not link debugging symbols, add --nodebugsymbols and compiled binaries will be much smaller.

To use brpc with glog, add --with-glog.

To enable thrift support, install thrift first and add --with-thrift.

$ ls my_dev
gflags_dev protobuf_dev leveldb_dev brpc_dev
$ cd brpc_dev
$ sh config_brpc.sh --headers=.. --libs=..

Compile brpc with cmake

Same with here

Note: With same environment, the performance of the MacOS version is worse than the Linux version. If your service is performance-critical, do not use MacOS as your production environment.

Apple Silicon

The code at master HEAD already supports M1 series chips. M2 series are not tested yet. Please feel free to report remaining warnings/errors to us by issues.

Prepare deps

Install dependencies:

brew install openssl git gnu-getopt coreutils gflags protobuf leveldb

If you need to enable cpu/heap profilers in examples:

brew install gperftools

If you need to run tests, googletest is required. Run brew install googletest first to see if it works. If not (old homebrew does not have googletest), you can download and compile googletest by your own:

git clone https://github.com/google/googletest -b release-1.10.0 && cd googletest/googletest && mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-std=c++11" .. && make

After the compilation, copy include/ and lib/ into /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib respectively to expose gtest to all apps

OpenSSL

openssl installed in Monterey may not be found at /usr/local/opt/openssl, instead it’s probably put under /opt/homebrew/Cellar. If the compiler cannot find openssl：

Run brew link openssl --force first and check if /user/local/opt/openssl appears.
If above command does not work, consider making a soft link using sudo ln -s /opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@3/3.0.3 /usr/local/opt/openssl. Note that the installed openssl in above command may be put in different places in different environments, which could be revealed by running brew info openssl.

Compile brpc with config_brpc.sh

git clone brpc, cd into the repo and run

$ sh config_brpc.sh --headers=/usr/local/include --libs=/usr/local/lib --cc=clang --cxx=clang++
$ make

The homebrew in Monterey may install software at different directories from before. If path related errors are reported, try setting headers/libs like below:

$ sh config_brpc.sh --headers=/opt/homebrew/include --libs=/opt/homebrew/lib --cc=clang --cxx=clang++
$ make

To not link debugging symbols, add --nodebugsymbols and compiled binaries will be much smaller.

To use brpc with glog, add --with-glog.

Run example

$ cd example/echo_c++
$ make
$ ./echo_server &
$ ./echo_client

Examples link brpc statically, if you need to link the shared version, make clean and LINK_SO=1 make

Run tests

$ cd test
$ sh run_tests.sh

Compile brpc with cmake

Same with

Compile brpc with docker:

GCC: 4.8-11.2

c++11 is turned on by default to remove dependencies on boost (atomic).

The over-aligned issues in GCC7 is suppressed temporarily now.

Using other versions of gcc may generate warnings, contact us to fix.

Adding -D__const__= to cxxflags in your makefiles is a must to avoid .

Clang: 3.5-4.0

no known issues.

glibc: 2.12-2.25

no known issues.

protobuf: 2.4+

Be compatible with pb 3.x and pb 2.x with the same file: Don’t use new types in proto3 and start the proto file with syntax="proto2"; can add syntax="proto2" to all proto files without it.

Arena in pb 3.x is not supported yet.

gflags: 2.0-2.2.1

no known issues.

openssl: 0.97-1.1

required by https.

tcmalloc: 1.7-2.5

brpc does not link by default. Users link tcmalloc on-demand.

Comparing to ptmalloc embedded in glibc, tcmalloc often improves performance. However different versions of tcmalloc may behave really differently. For example, tcmalloc 2.1 may make multi-threaded examples in brpc perform significantly worse(due to a spinlock in tcmalloc) than the one using tcmalloc 1.7 and 2.5. Even different minor versions may differ. When you program behave unexpectedly, remove tcmalloc or try another version.

Code compiled with gcc 4.8.2 and linked to a tcmalloc compiled with earlier GCC may crash or deadlock before main(), E.g:

When you meet the issue, compile tcmalloc with the same GCC.

Another common issue with tcmalloc is that it does not return memory to system as early as ptmalloc. So when there’s an invalid memory access, the program may not crash directly, instead it crashes at a unrelated place, or even not crash. When you program has weird memory issues, try removing tcmalloc.

If you want to use cpu profiler or , do link libtcmalloc_and_profiler.a. These two profilers are based on tcmalloc. contention profiler does not require tcmalloc.

When you remove tcmalloc, not only remove the linkage with tcmalloc but also the macro .

glog: 3.3+

brpc implements a default logging utility which conflicts with glog. To replace this with glog, add –with-glog to config_brpc.sh or add -DWITH_GLOG=ON to cmake.

valgrind: 3.8+

brpc detects valgrind automatically (and registers stacks of bthread). Older valgrind(say 3.2) is not supported.

thrift: 0.9.3-0.11.0

no known issues.

We provide a program to help you to track and monitor all brpc instances. Just run trackme_server somewhere and launch need-to-be-tracked instances with -trackme_server=SERVER. The trackme_server will receive pings from instances periodically and print logs when it does. You can aggregate instance addresses from the log and call builtin services of the instances for further information.