This section describes the process for obtaining a copy of the RabbitMQ source code, as well as instructions for building the server and the client libraries from source.
Table of Contents
Required Libraries and Tools
In order to build RabbitMQ, you will need a few tools. For building the server:
- the Erlang development and runtime tools
- a recent version of Python, for generating AMQP framing code from the AMQP XML specification
- a recent version of GNU make
and for building the Java client libraries:
- a Java compiler, for Java language version 1.5 or newer
-
Ant, version 1.6 or
newer, including the optional
ant-trax.jar(if you download ant from the above then this is included; if you are using theantdebian package then you also need to install theant-optionalpackage).
Building the source
The source code distribution is split into two main parts:
the server code and the java client library code. Both make
use of the included docs/specs directory, which
contains the machine-readable AMQP protocol specification
XML document.
Top-level Makefile
The top-level Makefile contains targets all,
server, client, and
clean. all will clean and then
build everything. server and
client will invoke the respective build targets
for the server and client. clean will remove
any built targets.
The top-level Makefile also contains a bunch of other targets which are used in preparing a release - these are unlikely to be of interest.
Building the server
Change to the erlang/rabbit directory, and
type make.
Other interesting Makefile targets include
- all
- The default target. Builds the server.
- run
-
Builds the server and starts an instance with an
interactive Erlang shell. This will by default create
a Mnesia database in
/tmp/rabbit-mnesia, but this location can be overridden by setting the Makefile variableMNESIA_DIR:make run MNESIA_DIR=/some/other/location/for/rabbit-mnesia - clean
-
Removes build products and wipes the Mnesia database
directory used by the
runtarget. See the above description ofMNESIA_DIR. - dist
-
Builds the server and then constructs a directory
containing a binary server distribution. By default,
the distribution will be placed in
./dist, but this can be overridden by setting theDIST_DIRvariable:make dist DIST_DIR=/some/place/to/put/a/distributionThe server startup scripts are by default placed in
$(DIST_DIR)/sbin, and this too can be overridden, by settingSBIN_DIR:make dist DIST_DIR=/tmp/dist/usr/lib/erlang/lib/rabbitmq_server-version \ SBIN_DIR=/tmp/dist/usr/sbin
Building the Java client libraries
Ensure JAVA_HOME is correctly set. Change to
the java directory, edit
config.properties.xml to fit your needs and
type ant.
Other interesting build.xml targets include
- build
-
The default target. Builds the client library classes
into
build/classes. - clean
-
Removes the entire
build/directory, including compiled classes, built jar files, and any distributions placed underbuild/dist. - jar
-
Builds a jar file from the client library classes into
build/lib. - dist
-
Constructs a directory, by default
build/dist, containing the RabbitMQ client jar files as well as all the libraries the AMQP client depends on fromlib. The distribution output directory can be overridden by setting the Ant propertydist.outto a new location:ant -Ddist.out=/some/place/to/put/a/distribution dist