1 Building and installing jemalloc can be as simple as typing the following while
2 in the root directory of the source tree:
8 === Advanced configuration =====================================================
10 The 'configure' script supports numerous options that allow control of which
11 functionality is enabled, where jemalloc is installed, etc. Optionally, pass
12 any of the following arguments (not a definitive list) to 'configure':
15 Print a definitive list of options.
17 --prefix=<install-root-dir>
18 Set the base directory in which to install. For example:
20 ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
22 will cause files to be installed into /usr/local/include, /usr/local/lib,
25 --with-rpath=<colon-separated-rpath>
26 Embed one or more library paths, so that libjemalloc can find the libraries
27 it is linked to. This works only on ELF-based systems.
29 --with-jemalloc-prefix=<prefix>
30 Prefix all public APIs with <prefix>. For example, if <prefix> is
31 "prefix_", API changes like the following occur:
33 malloc() --> prefix_malloc()
34 malloc_conf --> prefix_malloc_conf
35 /etc/malloc.conf --> /etc/prefix_malloc.conf
36 MALLOC_CONF --> PREFIX_MALLOC_CONF
38 This makes it possible to use jemalloc at the same time as the system
39 allocator, or even to use multiple copies of jemalloc simultaneously.
41 By default, the prefix is "", except on OS X, where it is "je_". On OS X,
42 jemalloc overlays the default malloc zone, but makes no attempt to actually
43 replace the "malloc", "calloc", etc. symbols.
45 --with-private-namespace=<prefix>
46 Prefix all library-private APIs with <prefix>. For shared libraries,
47 symbol visibility mechanisms prevent these symbols from being exported, but
48 for static libraries, naming collisions are a real possibility. By
49 default, the prefix is "" (empty string).
51 --with-install-suffix=<suffix>
52 Append <suffix> to the base name of all installed files, such that multiple
53 versions of jemalloc can coexist in the same installation directory. For
54 example, libjemalloc.so.0 becomes libjemalloc<suffix>.so.0.
57 Enable code that silences non-useful compiler warnings. This is helpful
58 when trying to tell serious warnings from those due to compiler
59 limitations, but it potentially incurs a performance penalty.
62 Enable assertions and validation code. This incurs a substantial
63 performance hit, but is very useful during application development.
66 Enable statistics gathering functionality. See the "opt.stats_print"
67 option documentation for usage details.
70 Enable heap profiling and leak detection functionality. See the "opt.prof"
71 option documentation for usage details. When enabled, there are several
72 approaches to backtracing, and the configure script chooses the first one
73 in the following list that appears to function correctly:
75 + libunwind (requires --enable-prof-libunwind)
76 + libgcc (unless --disable-prof-libgcc)
77 + gcc intrinsics (unless --disable-prof-gcc)
79 --enable-prof-libunwind
80 Use the libunwind library (http://www.nongnu.org/libunwind/) for stack
84 Disable the use of libgcc's backtracing functionality.
87 Disable the use of gcc intrinsics for backtracing.
89 --with-static-libunwind=<libunwind.a>
90 Statically link against the specified libunwind.a rather than dynamically
91 linking with -lunwind.
94 Disable tiny (sub-quantum-sized) object support. Technically it is not
95 legal for a malloc implementation to allocate objects with less than
96 quantum alignment (8 or 16 bytes, depending on architecture), but in
97 practice it never causes any problems if, for example, 4-byte allocations
101 Disable thread-specific caches for small objects. Objects are cached and
102 released in bulk, thus reducing the total number of mutex operations. See
103 the "opt.tcache" option for usage details.
106 Enable mmap()ed swap file support. When this feature is built in, it is
107 possible to specify one or more files that act as backing store. This
108 effectively allows for per application swap files.
111 Enable support for page allocation/deallocation via sbrk(2), in addition to
115 Enable support for junk/zero filling of memory. See the "opt.junk"/
116 "opt.zero" option documentation for usage details.
119 Enable support for optional immediate termination due to out-of-memory
120 errors, as is commonly implemented by "xmalloc" wrapper function for malloc.
121 See the "opt.xmalloc" option documentation for usage details.
124 Enable support for System V semantics, wherein malloc(0) returns NULL
125 rather than a minimal allocation. See the "opt.sysv" option documentation
128 --enable-dynamic-page-shift
129 Under most conditions, the system page size never changes (usually 4KiB or
130 8KiB, depending on architecture and configuration), and unless this option
131 is enabled, jemalloc assumes that page size can safely be determined during
132 configuration and hard-coded. Enabling dynamic page size determination has
133 a measurable impact on performance, since the compiler is forced to load
134 the page size from memory rather than embedding immediate values.
137 Disable code that wraps pthread_create() to detect when an application
138 switches from single-threaded to multi-threaded mode, so that it can avoid
139 mutex locking/unlocking operations while in single-threaded mode. In
140 practice, this feature usually has little impact on performance unless
141 thread-specific caching is disabled.
144 Disable thread-local storage (TLS), which allows for fast access to
145 thread-local variables via the __thread keyword. If TLS is available,
146 jemalloc uses it for several purposes.
148 --with-xslroot=<path>
149 Specify where to find DocBook XSL stylesheets when building the
152 The following environment variables (not a definitive list) impact configure's
156 Pass these flags to the compiler. You probably shouldn't define this unless
157 you know what you are doing. (Use EXTRA_CFLAGS instead.)
160 Append these flags to CFLAGS. This makes it possible to add flags such as
161 -Werror, while allowing the configure script to determine what other flags
162 are appropriate for the specified configuration.
164 The configure script specifically checks whether an optimization flag (-O*)
165 is specified in EXTRA_CFLAGS, and refrains from specifying an optimization
166 level if it finds that one has already been specified.
169 Pass these flags to the C preprocessor. Note that CFLAGS is not passed to
170 'cpp' when 'configure' is looking for include files, so you must use
171 CPPFLAGS instead if you need to help 'configure' find header files.
174 'ld' uses this colon-separated list to find libraries.
177 Pass these flags when linking.
180 'configure' uses this to find programs.
182 === Advanced compilation =======================================================
184 To install only parts of jemalloc, use the following targets:
191 To clean up build results to varying degrees, use the following make targets:
197 === Advanced installation ======================================================
199 Optionally, define make variables when invoking make, including (not
203 Use this as the installation prefix for header files.
206 Use this as the installation prefix for libraries.
209 Use this as the installation prefix for man pages.
212 Prepend DESTDIR to INCLUDEDIR, LIBDIR, DATADIR, and MANDIR. This is useful
213 when installing to a different path than was specified via --prefix.
216 Use this to invoke the C compiler.
219 Pass these flags to the compiler.
222 Pass these flags to the C preprocessor.
225 Pass these flags when linking.
228 Use this to search for programs used during configuration and building.
230 === Development ================================================================
232 If you intend to make non-trivial changes to jemalloc, use the 'autogen.sh'
233 script rather than 'configure'. This re-generates 'configure', enables
234 configuration dependency rules, and enables re-generation of automatically
235 generated source files.
237 The build system supports using an object directory separate from the source
238 tree. For example, you can create an 'obj' directory, and from within that
239 directory, issue configuration and build commands:
244 ../configure --enable-autogen
247 === Documentation ==============================================================
249 The manual page is generated in both html and roff formats. Any web browser
250 can be used to view the html manual. The roff manual page can be formatted
251 prior to installation via any of the following commands:
253 nroff -man -t doc/jemalloc.3
255 groff -man -t -Tps doc/jemalloc.3 | ps2pdf - doc/jemalloc.3.pdf
257 (cd doc; groff -man -man-ext -t -Thtml jemalloc.3 > jemalloc.3.html)