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How to Build ClickHouse on Linux

Supported platforms:

  • x86_64
  • AArch64
  • PowerPC 64 LE (experimental)
  • RISC-V 64 (experimental)

Building in docker​

We use the docker image clickhouse/binary-builder for our CI builds. It contains everything necessary to build the binary and packages. There is a script docker/packager/packager to ease the image usage:

# define a directory for the output artifacts
output_dir="build_results"
# a simplest build
./docker/packager/packager --package-type=binary --output-dir "$output_dir"
# build debian packages
./docker/packager/packager --package-type=deb --output-dir "$output_dir"
# by default, debian packages use thin LTO, so we can override it to speed up the build
CMAKE_FLAGS='-DENABLE_THINLTO=' ./docker/packager/packager --package-type=deb --output-dir "./$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)/build_results"

Building on Ubuntu​

The following tutorial is based on Ubuntu Linux. With appropriate changes, it should also work on any other Linux distribution. The minimum recommended Ubuntu version for development is 22.04 LTS.

Install Prerequisites​

sudo apt-get install git cmake ccache python3 ninja-build nasm yasm gawk lsb-release wget software-properties-common gnupg

Install and Use the Clang compiler​

On Ubuntu/Debian, you can use LLVM's automatic installation script; see here.

sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://apt.llvm.org/llvm.sh)"

Note: in case of trouble, you can also use this:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

For other Linux distributions - check the availability of LLVM's prebuild packages.

As of August 2023, clang-16 or higher will work. GCC as a compiler is not supported. To build with a specific Clang version:

tip

This is optional, if you are following along and just now installed Clang then check to see what version you have installed before setting this environment variable.

export CC=clang-17
export CXX=clang++-17

Checkout ClickHouse Sources​

git clone --recursive --shallow-submodules git@github.com:ClickHouse/ClickHouse.git

or

git clone --recursive --shallow-submodules https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse.git

Build ClickHouse​

cd ClickHouse
mkdir build
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build  # or: `cd build; ninja`
tip

In case cmake isn't able to detect the number of available logical cores, the build will be done by one thread. To overcome this, you can tweak cmake to use a specific number of threads with -j flag, for example, cmake --build build -j 16. Alternatively, you can generate build files with a specific number of jobs in advance to avoid always setting the flag: cmake -DPARALLEL_COMPILE_JOBS=16 -S . -B build, where 16 is the desired number of threads.

To create an executable, run cmake --build build --target clickhouse (or: cd build; ninja clickhouse). This will create an executable build/programs/clickhouse, which can be used with client or server arguments.

Building on Any Linux​

The build requires the following components:

  • Git (used to checkout the sources, not needed for the build)
  • CMake 3.20 or newer
  • Compiler: clang-17 or newer
  • Linker: lld-17 or newer
  • Ninja
  • Yasm
  • Gawk

If all the components are installed, you may build it in the same way as the steps above.

Example for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed:

sudo zypper install git cmake ninja clang-c++ python lld nasm yasm gawk
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse.git
mkdir build
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

Example for Fedora Rawhide:

sudo yum update
sudo yum --nogpg install git cmake make clang python3 ccache lld nasm yasm gawk
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse.git
mkdir build
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build