The Thrift environment consists of two main parts: The Thrift compiler EXE and the language-dependent libraries. Most of these libraries will require some kind of build and/or installation. But regarding the Thrift compiler utility, there are a number of different alternatives.
The first one of these alternatives is to download the pre-built Thrift Compiler EXE and only build the libraries needed from source, following one of the “Setup from source” methods outlined below.
The other two options are to build the Thrift compiler from source. The most recommended way to achieve this is by means of the Visual Studio C++ build project. Alternatively, the Thrift compiler can also be built via Cygwin or MinGW build environments, however this method is not only less comfortable, but more time-consuming and requires much more manual effort.
The windows Thrift compiler is available as a prebuilt exe available here. Note that there is no installation tool, rather this EXE file is already the Thrift compiler utility. Download the file and put it into some suitable location of your choice.
Now pick one of the “Build and install target libraries” below to continue.
Thrift’s compiler is written in C++ and designed to be portable, but there are some system requirements. Thrift’s runtime libraries are written in various languages, which are also required for the particular language interface.
After all requirements are in place, use the compiler/cpp/compiler.vcxproj build project to build the Thrift compiler. Copy the resulting EXE file to a location of your choice.
A few of the target language libraries also do provide Visual Studio project files, such as C++ and C#. These are located in the lib/<language>/ folders.
Most of the language packages must be built and installed manually using build tools better suited to those languages. Typical examples are Java, Ruby, Delphi, or PHP. Look for the README.md file in the lib/<language>/ folder for more details on how to build and install each language’s library package.
Thrift’s compiler is written in C++ and designed to be portable, but there are some system requirements. Thrift’s runtime libraries are written in various languages, which are also required for the particular language interface.
If you are building from the first time out of the source repository, you will need to generate the configure scripts. (This is not necessary if you downloaded a tarball.) From the top directory, do:
./bootstrap.sh
Once the configure scripts are generated, thrift can be configured. From the top directory, do:
export CXXFLAGS="-D PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE_NP=PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE"
./configure
Setting the CXXFLAGS environmental variable works around compile errors with PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE_NP being undeclared, by replacing it with the newer, portable PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE. (Tested on cygwin 20100320, Thrift r760184, latest pthread.)
Optional: You may not be able to make from the root Thrift directory due to errors (see below to resolve). To make the compiler only, change to the compiler directory before running make:
cd compiler/cpp
Now make the thrift compiler (& runtime libraries if make is run from the thrift root directory):
make
make install
Some language packages must be installed manually using build tools better suited to those languages. Typical examples are Java, Ruby, or PHP. Look for the README file in the lib/<language>/ folder for more details on the installation of each language library package.
See also Possible issues with MinGW install.
The following error occurs for some users when running ./configure:
./configure: line 21183: syntax error near unexpected token `MONO,'
./configure: line 21183: ` PKG_CHECK_MODULES(MONO, mono >= 1.2.6, have_mono=yes, have_mono=no)'
To resolve this, you’ll need to find your pkg.m4 (installed by the pkg-config package) file and copy it to the thrift/aclocal directory. From the top-level thrift directory, you can copy the file by running
cp /usr/share/aclocal/pkg.m4 aclocal
Finally, re-run ./bootstrap.sh and ./configure. (Note that pkg.m4 is created by the pkg-config tool. If your /usr/share/aclocal directory doesn’t contain the pkg.m4 file, you may not have pkg-config installed.)
Sometimes, there will be an error during the install of the perl libraries with chmod.
A workaround is to avoid installing the perl libraries if they are not needed.
If you don’t need perl, run configure with –without-perl.
If you need perl, and are happy to manually install it, replace the contents of thrift/lib/perl/Makefile with the following, after building thrift:
TODO
Sometimes, the installed libthrift.a will not link using g++, with linker errors about missing vtables and exceptions for Thrift classes.
A workaround is to link the compiled object files directly from your Thrift build, corresponding to the missing classes.
This can be implemented in a Makefile using the following lines:
THRIFT_O=<path to>/thrift/lib/cpp
LTHRIFT=$(THRIFT_O)/Thrift.o $(THRIFT_O)/TSocket.o $(THRIFT_O)/TBinaryProtocol.o $(THRIFT_O)/TBufferTransports.o
Then linking using $(LTHRIFT) instead of -lthrift.
TODO - diagnose the issue further
If your thrift C++ programs segfault on throw after fork()ing, compile them with g++-3.
The issue and patch are described on the Cygwin mailing list at http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2010-05/msg00203.html
This issue should be fixed in Cygwin versions after 1.7.5-1, or g++ 4.5.0.
To compile the Thrift generator & runtime libraries (untested) without the cygwin.dll dependency you need to install MinGW (www.mingw.org).
In addition, you need to add the following entry to your windows PATH variable.
C:\MINGW\BIN
Next, open compiler/cpp/Makefile.am and add the following line to thrift_CXXFLAGS
-DMINGW -mno-cygwin -lfl
Run bootstrap.sh:
./bootstrap.sh
Make sure you have java in your $PATH variable, if not do(adjust path if necessary):
export PATH=$PATH:"/cygdrive/c/program files/java/jre1.8.0_191/bin"
Run configure - using CXXFLAGS to work around an issue with an old pthreads define (untested on MinGW - works on Cygwin):
export CXXFLAGS="-D PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE_NP=PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE"
./configure
'’Optional:’’ To make the compiler only, change to the compiler directory before running make:
cd compiler/cpp
Run make:
mingw32-make.exe
See also Possible issues with Cygwin install, including the discussion about PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE_NP.
Make sure you add -lfl in your cxxflags in Makefile, also try adding -Lc:/cygwin/libs
Try and change the include dir to use the windows path from c like this: Edit compiler/cpp/Makefile, look for the declaration of BOOST_CPPFLAGS, change that line for
BOOST_CPPFLAGS = -Ic:/cygwin/usr/include/boost-1_53_0
add -DMINGW -mno-cygwin to the CXXDEFS variable in Makefile
For more information on the requirements see: Apache Thrift Requirements
For more information on building and installing Thrift see: Building from source