nvml: Linux NVM Library

This is the top-level README.md the Linux NVM Library. For more information, see http://pmem.io.

The Libraries

Please see the file LICENSE for information on how this library is licensed.

This tree contains a collection of libraries for using Non-Volatile Memory (NVM). There are currently six libraries:

libpmem -- basic pmem operations like flushing
libpmemblk, libpmemlog, libpmemobj -- pmem transactions
libvmem, libvmmalloc -- volatile use of pmem

These libraries are described in more detail on the pmem web site. There you'll find man pages, examples, and tutorials.

Currently, these libraries only work on 64-bit Linux.

Pre-Built Packages

If you want to install these libraries to try them out of your system, you can either install pre-built packages, which we build for every stable release, or clone the tree and build it yourself.

Builds are tagged something like 0.2+b1, which means Build 1 on top of version 0.2 and 0.2-rc3, which means Release Candidate 3 for version 0.2. Stable releases are the simpler major.minor tags like 0.2. To find pre-build packages, check the Downloads associated with the stable releases on the github release page.

Building The Source

The source tree is organized as follows:

doc -- man pages describing each library contained here
src -- the source for the libraries
src/benchmarks -- benchmarks used by development team
src/examples -- brief example programs using these libraries
src/test -- unit tests used by development team
src/tools -- various tools developed for NVML
utils -- utilities used during build & test
CONTRIBUTING.md -- instructions for people wishing to contribute

To build this library, you may need to install the following required packages on the build system:

autoconf
pkg-config

Some tests and example applications require additional packages, but they do not interrupt building if they are missing. An appropriate message is displayed instead. For details please read the DEPENDENCIES section in appropriate README file.

See the before_install: rules in the .travis.yml file at the top level of the repository to get an idea what packages were required to build on the travis-ci systems. Currently our travis systems are running Ubuntu 12.04 so there may be some differences between what is specified in travis.yml and what is needed for your OS distribution and version.

To build the latest development version, just clone this tree and build the master branch:

	$ git clone https://github.com/pmem/nvml
	$ cd nvml

Once the build system is setup, the NVM Library is built using this command at the top level:

	$ make

If you want to compile, and hopefully run the builtin tests, with a different compiler, you have to provide the CC and CXX variables. For example:

	$ make CC=clang CXX=clang++

These variables are independent and setting CC=clang does not set CXX=clang++.

Once the make completes (*), all the libraries are built and the examples under src/examples are built as well. You can play with the library within the build tree, or install it locally on your machine. Installing the library is more convenient since it installs man pages and libraries in the standard system locations:

	(as root...)
	# make install

To install this library into other locations, you can use the prefix variable, e.g.:

	$ make install prefix=/usr/local

This will install files to /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/include /usr/local/share/man.

To prepare this library for packaging, you can use the DESTDIR variable, e.g.:

	$ make install DESTDIR=/tmp

This will install files to /tmp/usr/lib, /tmp/usr/include /tmp/usr/share/man.

To install a complete copy of the source tree to $(DESTDIR)/nvml:

	$ make source DESTDIR=some_path

To build rpm packages on rpm-based distributions:

	$ make rpm

If you want to build packages without running tests, run:

	$ make BUILD_PACKAGE_CHECK=n rpm

DEPENDENCIES: rpmbuild

To build dpkg packages on Debian-based distributions:

	$ make dpkg

If you want to build packages without running tests, run:

	$ make BUILD_PACKAGE_CHECK=n dpkg

DEPENDENCIES: devscripts

(*) By default all code is built with -Werror flag which fails the whole build when compiler emits any warning. It's very useful during development, but can be annoying in deployment. If you want to disable -Werror, you can use EXTRA_CFLAGS variable:

	$ make EXTRA_CFLAGS="-Wno-error"

	$ make EXTRA_CFLAGS="-Wno-error=$(type-of-warning)"

Testing the Libraries

To build and run the unit tests:

	$ make check

To run a specific subset of tests, run for example:

	$ make check TEST_TYPE=short TEST_BUILD=debug TEST_FS=pmem

To modify the timeout which is available for check type tests, run:

	$ make check TEST_TIME=1m

This will set the timeout to 1 minute.

Please refer to the src/test/README for more details on how to run different types of tests.

To compile this library with enabled support for the PM-aware version of Valgrind, supply the compiler with the USE_VG_PMEMCHECK flag, for example:

	$ make EXTRA_CFLAGS=-DUSE_VG_PMEMCHECK

For Valgrind memcheck support, supply USE_VG_MEMCHECK flag. USE_VALGRIND flag enables both.

To test the libraries with AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, run:

	$ make EXTRA_CFLAGS="-fsanitize=address,undefined" EXTRA_LDFLAGS="-fsanitize=address,undefined" clobber all test check

Experimental Packages

If you want to build/install experimental packages run:

	$ make EXPERIMENTAL=y [install,rpm,dpkg]

NOTE: The libfabric package required to build the librpmem and rpmemd is not yet available on stable Debian-based distributions. This makes it impossible to create Debian packages.

If you want to build Debian packages of librpmem and rpmemd run:

	$ make EXPERIMENTAL=y RPMEM_DPKG=y dpkg

Contacts

For more information on this library, contact Krzysztof Czurylo (krzysztof.czurylo@intel.com), Andy Rudoff (andy.rudoff@intel.com), or post to our Google group.