This document has detailed instructions on how to build gRPC C++ from source. Note that it only covers the build of gRPC itself and is meant for gRPC C++ contributors and/or power users. Other should follow the user instructions. See the How to use instructions for guidance on how to add gRPC as a dependency to a C++ application (there are several ways and system-wide installation is often not the best choice).
$ [sudo] apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool pkg-config
If you plan to build using CMake
$ [sudo] apt-get install cmake
If you are a contributor and plan to build and run tests, install the following as well:
$ # clang and LLVM C++ lib is only required for sanitizer builds
$ [sudo] apt-get install clang libc++-dev
On a Mac, you will first need to install Xcode or Command Line Tools for Xcode and then run the following command from a terminal:
$ [sudo] xcode-select --install
To build gRPC from source, you may need to install the following packages from Homebrew:
$ brew install autoconf automake libtool shtool
If you plan to build using CMake, follow the instructions from https://cmake.org/download/
Tip: when building,
you may want to explicitly set the LIBTOOL
and LIBTOOLIZE
environment variables when running make
to ensure the version
installed by brew
is being used:
$ LIBTOOL=glibtool LIBTOOLIZE=glibtoolize make
To prepare for cmake + Microsoft Visual C++ compiler build
- Install Visual Studio 2019 or later (Visual C++ compiler will be used).
- Install Git.
- Install CMake.
- Install nasm and add it to
PATH
(choco install nasm
) - required by boringssl - (Optional) Install Ninja (
choco install ninja
)
Before building, you need to clone the gRPC github repository and download submodules containing source code
for gRPC's dependencies (that's done by the submodule
command or --recursive
flag). Use following commands
to clone the gRPC repository at the latest stable release tag
$ git clone -b RELEASE_TAG_HERE https://github.com/grpc/grpc
$ cd grpc
$ git submodule update --init
> git clone -b RELEASE_TAG_HERE https://github.com/grpc/grpc
> cd grpc
> git submodule update --init
NOTE: The bazel
build tool uses a different model for dependencies. You only need to worry about downloading submodules if you're building
with something else than bazel
(e.g. cmake
).
In the C++ world, there's no "standard" build system that would work for all supported use cases and on all supported platforms.
Therefore, gRPC supports several major build systems, which should satisfy most users. Depending on your needs
we recommend building using bazel
or cmake
.
Bazel is the primary build system for gRPC C++. If you're comfortable using bazel, we can certainly recommend it. Using bazel will give you the best developer experience in addition to faster and cleaner builds.
You'll need bazel
version 1.0.0
or higher to build gRPC.
See Installing Bazel for instructions how to install bazel on your system.
We support building with bazel
on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
From the grpc repository root
# Build gRPC C++
$ bazel build :all
# Run all the C/C++ tests
$ bazel test --config=dbg //test/...
NOTE: If you're using Bazel 7 or newer and working with gRPC, you'll need to turn off bzlmod. This is because gRPC isn't fully compatible with bzlmod yet. To do this, add --enable_bzlmod=false to your Bazel commands.
NOTE: If you are a gRPC maintainer and you have access to our test cluster, you should use our gRPC's Remote Execution environment to get significant improvement to the build and test speed (and a bunch of other very useful features).
Run from the grpc directory after cloning the repo with --recursive or updating submodules.
$ mkdir -p cmake/build
$ cd cmake/build
$ cmake ../..
$ make
If you want to build shared libraries (.so
files), run cmake
with -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
.
When using the "Visual Studio" generator,
cmake will generate a solution (grpc.sln
) that contains a VS project for
every target defined in CMakeLists.txt
(+ a few extra convenience projects
added automatically by cmake). After opening the solution with Visual Studio
you will be able to browse and build the code.
> @rem Run from grpc directory after cloning the repo with --recursive or updating submodules.
> md .build
> cd .build
> cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 16 2019"
> cmake --build . --config Release
Using gRPC C++ as a DLL is not recommended, but you can still enable it by running cmake
with -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
.
Please note that when using Ninja, you will still need Visual C++ (part of Visual Studio) installed to be able to compile the C/C++ sources.
> @rem Run from grpc directory after cloning the repo with --recursive or updating submodules.
> cd cmake
> md build
> cd build
> call "%VS140COMNTOOLS%..\..\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x64
> cmake ..\.. -GNinja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
> cmake --build .
Using gRPC C++ as a DLL is not recommended, but you can still enable it by running cmake
with -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
.
Windows DLL build is supported at a "best effort" basis and we don't recommend using gRPC C++ as a DLL as there are some known drawbacks around how C++ DLLs work on Windows. For example, there is no stable C++ ABI and you can't safely allocate memory in one DLL, and free it in another etc.
That said, we don't actively prohibit building DLLs on windows (it can be enabled in cmake with -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
), and are free to use the DLL builds
at your own risk.
- you've been warned that there are some important drawbacks and some things might not work at all or will be broken in interesting ways.
- we don't have extensive testing for DLL builds in place (to avoid maintenance costs, increased test duration etc.) so regressions / build breakages might occur
gRPC's CMake build system has two options for handling dependencies. CMake can build the dependencies for you, or it can search for libraries that are already installed on your system and use them to build gRPC.
This behavior is controlled by the gRPC_<depname>_PROVIDER
CMake variables,
e.g. gRPC_CARES_PROVIDER
. The options that these variables take are as follows:
- module - build dependencies alongside gRPC. The source code is obtained from gRPC's git submodules.
- package - use external copies of dependencies that are already available
on your system. These could come from your system package manager, or perhaps
you pre-installed them using CMake with the
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
option.
For example, if you set gRPC_CARES_PROVIDER=module
, then CMake will build
c-ares before building gRPC. On the other hand, if you set
gRPC_CARES_PROVIDER=package
, then CMake will search for a copy of c-ares
that's already installed on your system and use it to build gRPC.
Perform the following steps to install gRPC using CMake.
- Set
-DgRPC_INSTALL=ON
- Build the
install
target
The install destination is controlled by the
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
variable.
If you are running CMake v3.13 or newer you can build gRPC's dependencies in "module" mode and install them alongside gRPC in a single step. Example
If you are building gRPC < 1.27 or if you are using CMake < 3.13 you will need to select "package" mode (rather than "module" mode) for the dependencies. This means you will need to have external copies of these libraries available on your system. This example shows how to install dependencies with cmake before proceeding to installing gRPC itself.
# NOTE: all of gRPC's dependencies need to be already installed
$ cmake ../.. -DgRPC_INSTALL=ON \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
-DgRPC_ABSL_PROVIDER=package \
-DgRPC_CARES_PROVIDER=package \
-DgRPC_PROTOBUF_PROVIDER=package \
-DgRPC_RE2_PROVIDER=package \
-DgRPC_SSL_PROVIDER=package \
-DgRPC_ZLIB_PROVIDER=package
$ make
$ make install
You can use CMake to cross-compile gRPC for another architecture. In order to
do so, you will first need to build protoc
and grpc_cpp_plugin
for the host architecture. These tools are used during the build of gRPC, so
we need copies of executables that can be run natively.
You will likely need to install the toolchain for the platform you are targeting for your cross-compile. Once you have done so, you can write a toolchain file to tell CMake where to find the compilers and system tools that will be used for this build.
This toolchain file is specified to CMake by setting the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE
variable.
$ cmake ../.. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=path/to/file
$ make
Best efforts are made to bump the SONAME revision during ABI breaches. While a change in the SONAME clearly indicates an ABI incompatibility, no hard guarantees can be made about any sort of ABI stability across the same SONAME version.
NOTE: make
used to be gRPC's default build system, but we're no longer recommending it. You should use bazel
or cmake
instead. The Makefile
is only intended for internal usage and is not meant for public consumption.
From the grpc repository root
$ make
NOTE: if you get an error on linux such as 'aclocal-1.15: command not found', which can happen if you ran 'make' before installing the pre-reqs, try the following:
$ git clean -f -d -x && git submodule foreach --recursive git clean -f -d -x
$ [sudo] apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool pkg-config
$ make
By default gRPC uses protocol buffers,
you will need the protoc
compiler to generate stub server and client code.
If you compile gRPC from source, as described above, the Makefile will
automatically try compiling the protoc
in third_party if you cloned the
repository recursively and it detects that you do not already have 'protoc' compiler
installed.