Installing Skybison#

This guide details the recommended Linux setup.

Preparation#

Install CMake and either Make or Ninja. On Fedora, this can be done with:

$ sudo dnf install cmake ninja-build

Build preparation (cmake)#

$ git clone https://github.com/facebookexperimental/skybison
$ cd skybison
$ mkdir build
$ cmake -B build -GNinja -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=util/linux.cmake
# or, with Make
$ cmake -B build -GMake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=util/linux.cmake

Build#

$ ninja -C build
# or, with Make
$ make -C build

Enjoy!#

$ ./build/bin/python
Python 3.7.4+ (default)
[GCC Clang 9.0.20190721 ] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print("Hello " + "world!")
Hello world!
>>> import sys
>>> sys.implementation.name
'skybison'

Build modes#

You can change build type by adding the one of the following to the cmake command:

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release  // default
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug    // -g
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DebugOpt // -O2 -g with debug checks but faster
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo // like a release build but has debug symbols -- useful for callgrind

To run tests with address sanitizer (ASAN), add

-DSKYBISON_ASAN=1

before the platform. Like cmake -DSKYBISON_ASAN=1 ...

To run tests with the undefined behavior sanitizer (UBSAN), add

-DSKYBISON_UBSAN=1

before the platform. Like cmake -DSKYBISON_UBSAN=1 ...

Since you will likely have several build-XYZ folders hanging around, and it's useful for those not to show up in git status, they should be ignored by default in .gitignore.

Alternate linkers#

The mold linker is very fast and is superb for use in development. To specify it as your linker,

1. Install it
2. Either
   • Provide it as part of the CMake command with -DSKYBISON_LINKER=mold, or
   • Have it preload into ninja/make with mold -run ninja ...