Building on Windows

Method 1 (Win10 + Visual Studio 2015)

This is a simple step-by-step explanation of how I was able to build RocksDB (or RocksJava) and all of the 3rd-party libraries on Microsoft Windows 10. The Windows build system was already in place, however it took some trial-and-error for me to be able to build the 3rd-party libraries and incorporate them into the build.

  1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 (Community) with “Desktop development with C++” installed
  2. - I used version 3.14.2 installed from the 64bit MSI installer
  3. Git - I used the Windows Git Bash.
  4. - I used the 64bit MSI installer
  5. wget

Create a directory somewhere on your machine that will be used a container for both the RocksDB source code and that of its 3rd-party dependencies. On my machine I used C:\Users\aretter\code, from hereon in I will just refer to it as %CODE_HOME%; which can be set as an environment variable, i.e. SET CODE_HOME=C:\Users\aretter\code.

All of the following is executed from the “Developer Command Prompt for VS2015“:

Open the project in Visual Studio, create a new x64 Platform by copying the Win32 platform and selecting x64 CPU. Close Visual Studio.

  1. msbuild gflags.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
  2. msbuild gflags.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

Build Snappy

  1. cd %CODE_HOME%
  2. wget https://github.com/google/snappy/archive/1.1.7.zip
  3. unzip 1.1.7.zip
  4. mkdir build
  5. cd build
  6. cmake -DCMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM=x64 ..
  7. msbuild Snappy.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
  8. msbuild Snappy.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

The resultant static library can be found in %CODE_HOME%\snappy-1.1.7\build\Debug\snappy.lib or %CODE_HOME%\snappy-1.1.7\build\Release\snappy.lib.

The resultant static library can be found in %CODE_HOME%\lz4-1.9.2\visual\VS2010\bin\x64_Debug\liblz4_static.lib or %CODE_HOME%\lz4-1.9.2\visual\VS2010\bin\x64_Release\liblz4_static.lib.

Build ZLib

  1. cd %CODE_HOME%
  2. wget http://zlib.net/zlib1211.zip
  3. unzip zlib1211.zip
  4. cd zlib-1.2.11\contrib\vstudio\vc14

Edit the file , changing <command>cd ..\..\contrib\masmx64 bld_ml64.bat</command> to <command>cd ..\..\masmx64 bld_ml64.bat</command>. Add a new line after masmx64.

  1. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\amd64_x86\vcvarsamd64_x86.bat"
  2. msbuild zlibvc.sln /p:Configuration=Debug /p:Platform=x64
  3. msbuild zlibvc.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64
  4. copy x64\ZlibDllDebug\zlibwapi.lib x64\ZlibStatDebug\
  5. copy x64\ZlibDllRelease\zlibwapi.lib x64\ZlibStatRelease\

The resultant static library can be found in %CODE_HOME%\zlib-1.2.11\contrib\vstudio\vc14\x64\ZlibStatDebug\zlibstat.lib or %CODE_HOME%\zlib-1.2.11\contrib\vstudio\vc14\x64\ZlibStatRelease\zlibstat.lib.

Build RocksDB

  1. cd %CODE_HOME%
  2. git clone https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb.git
  3. cd rocksdb

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

  1. set(GFLAGS_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/gflags-2.2.0)
  2. set(GFLAGS_INCLUDE ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/include)
  3. set(GFLAGS_LIB_DEBUG ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/lib/Debug/gflags_static.lib)
  4. set(GFLAGS_LIB_RELEASE ${GFLAGS_HOME}/target/lib/Release/gflags_static.lib)
  6. set(SNAPPY_INCLUDE ${SNAPPY_HOME} ${SNAPPY_HOME}/build)
  7. set(SNAPPY_LIB_DEBUG ${SNAPPY_HOME}/build/Debug/snappy.lib)
  8. set(SNAPPY_LIB_RELEASE ${SNAPPY_HOME}/build/Release/snappy.lib)
  10. set(LZ4_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/lz4-1.9.2)
  11. set(LZ4_INCLUDE ${LZ4_HOME}/lib)
  12. set(LZ4_LIB_DEBUG ${LZ4_HOME}/visual/VS2010/bin/x64_Debug/liblz4_static.lib)
  13. set(LZ4_LIB_RELEASE ${LZ4_HOME}/visual/VS2010/bin/x64_Release/liblz4_static.lib)
  15. set(ZLIB_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/zlib-1.2.11)
  16. set(ZLIB_INCLUDE ${ZLIB_HOME})
  17. set(ZLIB_LIB_DEBUG ${ZLIB_HOME}/contrib/vstudio/vc14/x64/ZlibStatDebug/zlibstat.lib)
  18. set(ZLIB_LIB_RELEASE ${ZLIB_HOME}/contrib/vstudio/vc14/x64/ZlibStatRelease/zlibstat.lib)
  20. set(ZSTD_HOME $ENV{THIRDPARTY_HOME}/zstd-1.4.4)
  21. set(ZSTD_INCLUDE ${ZSTD_HOME}/lib ${ZSTD_HOME}/lib/dictBuilder)
  22. set(ZSTD_LIB_DEBUG ${ZSTD_HOME}/build/VS2010/bin/x64_Debug/libzstd_static.lib)
  23. set(ZSTD_LIB_RELEASE ${ZSTD_HOME}/build/VS2010/bin/x64_Release/libzstd_static.lib)

And then finally to compile RocksDB:

  • 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.

Method 2 (Win10 + Visual Studio 2017/2019)

  • cd %home%\vcpkg\ports\rocksdb, %home% is the path where you installed your vcpkg
  • set(VCPKG_LIBRARY_LINKAGE static) to the top of portfile.cmake and then running vcpkg install rocksdb:x64-windows. If you have installed rocksdb as a static library, run vcpkg remove rocksdb:x64-windows before install command. The resultant static library can be found in %home%\vcpkg\packages\rocksdb_x64-windows\lib\rocksdb.lib rather than %home%\vcpkg\packages\rocksdb_x64-windows\lib\rocksdb-shared.lib.