Table of contents

Building the code from source

When is it necessary to build from source?

In most cases, you can use a release build downloaded from the Releases page on GitHub. (See the quick start page for more information) You need to build from source in one of the following circumstances:

How to build from source

Build platforms

We currently support building from source on the following platforms:

Shasta no longer builds on Ubuntu 20.04 or on any version of macOS.

Build commands

  1. Check out Shasta repository (You need to have git installed on your machine)
    git clone https://github.com/chanzuckerberg/shasta.git
    
  2. Install prerequisite packages
    sudo shasta/scripts/InstallPrerequisites-Ubuntu.sh
    
  3. Build
    mkdir shasta-build
    cd shasta-build
    cmake ../shasta
    make all -j
    make install
    

    Build contents

    The build process described above creates in the shasta-build directory a shasta-install directory that contains the following:

    • A bin directory containing the Shasta executable, named shasta, Shasta shared library shasta.so, and several scripts.
    • A conf directory containing sample config files.
    • A docs directory containing this and other documentation.

    Building smaller binaries

    If you don't plan to use your build for debugging, you can use command make install/strip instead of make install as the last step of the build process. This will strip debug symbols from the Shasta executable and shared library, which significantly reduces the size of the build directory.

    An alternative to building from source: downloading a test build

    Shasta uses GitHub Actions to perform a test build every time a push to the repository occurs. The main goal of these builds is to test that new code continues to build on all supported platforms, but the builds are accessible to all users for download for 90 days after their creation. The test builds are generally not as reliable as release builds and can sometimes be non-functional. With this in mind, you can use the following steps to download one of these test builds:

    • Make sure to be logged in to GitHub. Any user will work, but GitHub will not allow downloading a test build anonymously.
    • Go to the GitHub Actions page of the Shasta repository.
    • Choose a build that has green checkmark and click on it. The checkmark indicates that a push occurred at that commit, followed by a successful test build.
    • Scroll down to the Artifacts section and select what you want to download. Your browser will then download the file you selected as zipped. You can use the unzip command, or equivalent, to unzip it. After unzipping it, if it is an executable. Before running it, you will have to set its execute permission bit via chmod ugo+x filename.