ndn-cxx is built against a continuous integration system and has been tested on the following platforms:
- Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy)
- Ubuntu 24.04 (noble)
- Debian 11 (bullseye)
- Debian 12 (bookworm)
- CentOS Stream 9
- macOS 13 / 14 / 15
ndn-cxx should also work on the following platforms, although they are not officially supported:
- Any other recent version of Ubuntu not listed above
- Fedora >= 34
- Alpine >= 3.14
- Any version of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian 11 (bullseye) or later
- macOS >= 11
- FreeBSD >= 12.2
- GCC >= 10.2 or clang >= 10.0 (if you are on Linux or FreeBSD)
- Xcode >= 13.0 or corresponding version of Command Line Tools (if you are on macOS)
- Python >= 3.8
- pkg-config
- Boost >= 1.71.0
- OpenSSL >= 1.1.1
- SQLite 3.x
To build ndn-cxx from source, one must first install a C++ compiler and all necessary development tools and libraries:
On Debian and Ubuntu
In a terminal, enter:
sudo apt install build-essential libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev pkg-config python3
On CentOS and Fedora
In a terminal, enter:
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ boost-devel openssl-devel sqlite-devel pkgconf-pkg-config python3
On macOS
Install either Xcode (from the App Store) or the Command Line Tools (with
xcode-select --install
)If using Homebrew (recommended), enter the following in a terminal:
brew install boost openssl pkgconf
Warning
If a major OS upgrade is performed after installing the dependencies with Homebrew, remember to reinstall all packages.
On FreeBSD
In a terminal, enter:
sudo pkg install boost-libs openssl sqlite3 pkgconf python3
To build tutorials, man pages, and API documentation the following additional dependencies need to be installed:
- doxygen
- graphviz
- sphinx >= 4.0
- sphinxcontrib-doxylink
The following lists the steps to install these prerequisites on various common platforms.
Note
On Linux, you may need to add $HOME/.local/bin
to the PATH
environment variable
for your user, for example:
export PATH="${HOME}/.local/bin${PATH:+:}${PATH}"
On Debian and Ubuntu:
sudo apt install doxygen graphviz python3-pip pip3 install --user sphinx sphinxcontrib-doxylink
On CentOS and Fedora:
sudo dnf install doxygen graphviz python3-pip pip3 install --user sphinx sphinxcontrib-doxylink
On macOS:
brew install doxygen graphviz sudo pip3 install sphinx sphinxcontrib-doxylink
On FreeBSD:
sudo pkg install doxygen graphviz py39-sphinx
Note
These are instructions for regular builds of ndn-cxx (release mode). If you are planning to develop the ndn-cxx code itself, you should do a :ref:`Development build`.
To build in a terminal, change directory to the ndn-cxx root, then enter:
./waf configure
./waf
sudo ./waf install
By default, only the shared variant of the ndn-cxx library will be built. To build the
static library, pass --enable-static
to the ./waf configure
command:
./waf configure --enable-static
To disable the build of the shared library and build only the static library, use the
additional --disable-shared
option. Note that at least one variant of the library
needs to be enabled.
./waf configure --enable-static --disable-shared
On Linux, it is necessary to run the following command after the shared library has been installed:
sudo ldconfig
Note
On Linux, when the library is installed in a non-default location (generally, not in
/usr/lib
or /usr/local/lib
), the following additional actions may be necessary.
The library installation path should be added to /etc/ld.so.conf
or to
/etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf
before running ldconfig
. For example:
echo /usr/local/lib64 | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ndn-cxx.conf
sudo ldconfig
Alternatively, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
environment variable can be set to point to
the installation directory of the shared library:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib64
The ./waf install
command installs the following files:
<LIBDIR>/libndn-cxx.a
: static NDN C++ library (if enabled).<LIBDIR>/libndn-cxx.so
,<LIBDIR>/libndn-cxx.so.<VERSION>
(on Linux),<LIBDIR>/libndn-cxx.dylib
,<LIBDIR>/libndn-cxx.<VERSION>.dylib
(on macOS): shared NDN C++ library (if enabled).<LIBDIR>/pkgconfig/libndn-cxx.pc
: pkgconfig file storing all necessary flags to build against the library. For example, if thepkg-config
orpkgconf
package is installed andPKG_CONFIG_PATH
is configured properly (or if<LIBDIR>/pkgconfig
is a default search path), the commandpkg-config --cflags --libs libndn-cxx
will return all necessary compile and link flags for the ndn-cxx library.<BINDIR>/ndnsec
: command-line tool to manage NDN keys and certificates.<BINDIR>/ndnsec-*
: convenience aliases forndnsec
tools.
If configured with tests (./waf configure --with-tests
), the above commands
will also produce:
build/unit-tests
: a unit test binary for the library; it will not be installed.
1.5 GB available memory per CPU core is necessary for efficient compilation. On a
multi-core machine with less than 1.5 GB available memory per CPU core, limit the
objects being compiled in parallel with ./waf -jN
, where N is the amount of
available memory divided by 1.5 GB (e.g., ./waf -j2
for 3 GB of memory). This
should avoid memory thrashing and result in faster compilation.
By default, the examples in the examples/
directory will not be built. To enable
them, pass --with-examples
during the configuration step:
./waf configure --with-examples
./waf
sudo ./waf install
sudo ldconfig # on Linux only
To run the examples:
# trivial producer app
./build/examples/producer
# trivial consumer app
./build/examples/consumer
# trivial consumer app with timers
./build/examples/consumer-with-timer
If you want to make a new sample application, just create a .cpp
file inside the
examples/
directory and it will be compiled during the next run of ./waf
:
cp examples/consumer.cpp examples/my-new-app.cpp
... # edit examples/my-new-app.cpp with your preferred editor
./waf
sudo ./waf install
sudo ldconfig # on Linux only
./build/examples/my-new-app
The default compiler flags include debug symbols in binaries. This should provide more meaningful debugging information if ndn-cxx or your application crashes.
If this is not desired, the default flags can be overridden to disable debug symbols.
The following example shows how to completely disable debug symbols and configure
ndn-cxx to be installed into /usr
with configuration in the /etc
directory.
CXXFLAGS="-O2" ./waf configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
./waf
sudo ./waf install
To build ndn-cxx with a different compiler (rather than the platform default), set the
CXX
environment variable to point to the compiler binary. For example, to build
with clang on Linux, use the following:
CXX=clang++ ./waf configure
Tutorials and API documentation can be built using the following commands:
# Full set of documentation (tutorials + API) in build/docs
./waf docs
# Only tutorials in build/docs
./waf sphinx
# Only API docs in build/docs/doxygen
./waf doxygen
If sphinx-build
is detected during ./waf configure
, man pages will automatically
be built and installed during the normal build process (i.e., during ./waf
and
./waf install
). By default, man pages will be installed into ${PREFIX}/share/man
(the default value for PREFIX
is /usr/local
). This location can be changed
during the ./waf configure
stage using the --prefix
, --datarootdir
, or
--mandir
options.
For further details, please refer to ./waf --help
.
The following is the suggested build procedure for development builds:
./waf configure --debug --with-tests
./waf
sudo ./waf install
sudo ldconfig # on Linux only
In a development build, most compiler optimizations will be disabled and all warnings
will be treated as errors. This default behavior can be overridden by setting the
CXXFLAGS
environment variable before running ./waf configure
, for example:
CXXFLAGS="-O1 -g3 -Wall" ./waf configure --debug --with-tests
./waf