Building and installing jemalloc can be as simple as typing the following while in the root directory of the source tree: ./configure make make install === Advanced configuration ===================================================== The 'configure' script supports numerous options that allow control of which functionality is enabled, where jemalloc is installed, etc. Optionally, pass any of the following arguments (not a definitive list) to 'configure': --help Print a definitive list of options. --prefix= Set the base directory in which to install. For example: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local will cause files to be installed into /usr/local/include, /usr/local/lib, and /usr/local/man. --with-rpath= Embed one or more library paths, so that libjemalloc can find the libraries it is linked to. This works only on ELF-based systems. --with-jemalloc-prefix= Prefix all public APIs with . For example, if is "prefix_", API changes like the following occur: malloc() --> prefix_malloc() malloc_conf --> prefix_malloc_conf /etc/malloc.conf --> /etc/prefix_malloc.conf MALLOC_CONF --> PREFIX_MALLOC_CONF This makes it possible to use jemalloc at the same time as the system allocator, or even to use multiple copies of jemalloc simultaneously. By default, the prefix is "", except on OS X, where it is "je_". On OS X, jemalloc overlays the default malloc zone, but makes no attempt to actually replace the "malloc", "calloc", etc. symbols. --with-private-namespace= Prefix all library-private APIs with . For shared libraries, symbol visibility mechanisms prevent these symbols from being exported, but for static libraries, naming collisions are a real possibility. By default, the prefix is "" (empty string). --with-install-suffix= Append to the base name of all installed files, such that multiple versions of jemalloc can coexist in the same installation directory. For example, libjemalloc.so.0 becomes libjemalloc.so.0. --enable-cc-silence Enable code that silences non-useful compiler warnings. This is helpful when trying to tell serious warnings from those due to compiler limitations, but it potentially incurs a performance penalty. --enable-debug Enable assertions and validation code. This incurs a substantial performance hit, but is very useful during application development. --enable-stats Enable statistics gathering functionality. See the "opt.stats_print" option documentation for usage details. --enable-prof Enable heap profiling and leak detection functionality. See the "opt.prof" option documentation for usage details. When enabled, there are several approaches to backtracing, and the configure script chooses the first one in the following list that appears to function correctly: + libunwind (requires --enable-prof-libunwind) + libgcc (unless --disable-prof-libgcc) + gcc intrinsics (unless --disable-prof-gcc) --enable-prof-libunwind Use the libunwind library (http://www.nongnu.org/libunwind/) for stack backtracing. --disable-prof-libgcc Disable the use of libgcc's backtracing functionality. --disable-prof-gcc Disable the use of gcc intrinsics for backtracing. --with-static-libunwind= Statically link against the specified libunwind.a rather than dynamically linking with -lunwind. --disable-tiny Disable tiny (sub-quantum-sized) object support. Technically it is not legal for a malloc implementation to allocate objects with less than quantum alignment (8 or 16 bytes, depending on architecture), but in practice it never causes any problems if, for example, 4-byte allocations are 4-byte-aligned. --disable-tcache Disable thread-specific caches for small objects. Objects are cached and released in bulk, thus reducing the total number of mutex operations. See the "opt.tcache" option for usage details. --enable-swap Enable mmap()ed swap file support. When this feature is built in, it is possible to specify one or more files that act as backing store. This effectively allows for per application swap files. --enable-dss Enable support for page allocation/deallocation via sbrk(2), in addition to mmap(2). --enable-fill Enable support for junk/zero filling of memory. See the "opt.junk"/ "opt.zero" option documentation for usage details. --enable-xmalloc Enable support for optional immediate termination due to out-of-memory errors, as is commonly implemented by "xmalloc" wrapper function for malloc. See the "opt.xmalloc" option documentation for usage details. --enable-sysv Enable support for System V semantics, wherein malloc(0) returns NULL rather than a minimal allocation. See the "opt.sysv" option documentation for usage details. --enable-dynamic-page-shift Under most conditions, the system page size never changes (usually 4KiB or 8KiB, depending on architecture and configuration), and unless this option is enabled, jemalloc assumes that page size can safely be determined during configuration and hard-coded. Enabling dynamic page size determination has a measurable impact on performance, since the compiler is forced to load the page size from memory rather than embedding immediate values. --disable-lazy-lock Disable code that wraps pthread_create() to detect when an application switches from single-threaded to multi-threaded mode, so that it can avoid mutex locking/unlocking operations while in single-threaded mode. In practice, this feature usually has little impact on performance unless thread-specific caching is disabled. --disable-tls Disable thread-local storage (TLS), which allows for fast access to thread-local variables via the __thread keyword. If TLS is available, jemalloc uses it for several purposes. --with-xslroot= Specify where to find DocBook XSL stylesheets when building the documentation. The following environment variables (not a definitive list) impact configure's behavior: CFLAGS="?" Pass these flags to the compiler. You probably shouldn't define this unless you know what you are doing. (Use EXTRA_CFLAGS instead.) EXTRA_CFLAGS="?" Append these flags to CFLAGS. This makes it possible to add flags such as -Werror, while allowing the configure script to determine what other flags are appropriate for the specified configuration. The configure script specifically checks whether an optimization flag (-O*) is specified in EXTRA_CFLAGS, and refrains from specifying an optimization level if it finds that one has already been specified. CPPFLAGS="?" Pass these flags to the C preprocessor. Note that CFLAGS is not passed to 'cpp' when 'configure' is looking for include files, so you must use CPPFLAGS instead if you need to help 'configure' find header files. LD_LIBRARY_PATH="?" 'ld' uses this colon-separated list to find libraries. LDFLAGS="?" Pass these flags when linking. PATH="?" 'configure' uses this to find programs. === Advanced compilation ======================================================= To install only parts of jemalloc, use the following targets: install_bin install_include install_lib install_doc To clean up build results to varying degrees, use the following make targets: clean distclean relclean === Advanced installation ====================================================== Optionally, define make variables when invoking make, including (not exclusively): INCLUDEDIR="?" Use this as the installation prefix for header files. LIBDIR="?" Use this as the installation prefix for libraries. MANDIR="?" Use this as the installation prefix for man pages. DESTDIR="?" Prepend DESTDIR to INCLUDEDIR, LIBDIR, DATADIR, and MANDIR. This is useful when installing to a different path than was specified via --prefix. CC="?" Use this to invoke the C compiler. CFLAGS="?" Pass these flags to the compiler. CPPFLAGS="?" Pass these flags to the C preprocessor. LDFLAGS="?" Pass these flags when linking. PATH="?" Use this to search for programs used during configuration and building. === Development ================================================================ If you intend to make non-trivial changes to jemalloc, use the 'autogen.sh' script rather than 'configure'. This re-generates 'configure', enables configuration dependency rules, and enables re-generation of automatically generated source files. The build system supports using an object directory separate from the source tree. For example, you can create an 'obj' directory, and from within that directory, issue configuration and build commands: autoconf mkdir obj cd obj ../configure --enable-autogen make === Documentation ============================================================== The manual page is generated in both html and roff formats. Any web browser can be used to view the html manual. The roff manual page can be formatted prior to installation via any of the following commands: nroff -man -t doc/jemalloc.3 groff -man -t -Tps doc/jemalloc.3 | ps2pdf - doc/jemalloc.3.pdf (cd doc; groff -man -man-ext -t -Thtml jemalloc.3 > jemalloc.3.html)