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https://github.com/firebuild/firebuild

Automatic build accelerator cache for Linux
https://github.com/firebuild/firebuild

acceleration build cache cargo clang cmake compile cpp fortran java make ninja parallel python rust rustc scala

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Automatic build accelerator cache for Linux

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README 

        
# Firebuild



Firebuild logo



## Introduction



Firebuild is an automatic build accelerator. It works by caching the outputs of executed commands

and replaying the results when the same commands are executed with the same parameters within the

same environment.



The commands can be compilation or other build artifact generation steps, tests, or any command that

produces predictable output. The commands to cache and replay from the cache are determined

automatically based on `firebuild`'s [configuration](etc/firebuild.conf) and each command's and its

children's observed behavior.



Firebuild accelerates cc and ld with LTO



## Usage



Prefix your build command with `firebuild`:



    firebuild 



The first build is typically a 5-10% slower due to the overhead of analyzing the build and populating

the cache. Successive builds can be 5-20 times or even faster depending on the project and the changes

between the builds.



### Improving hit rate



If the hit rate (check with `firebuild -s`) is not at the expected levels run firebuild with `-d proc`

to see why particular commands can't be stored to the cache or with `-d shortcut` to see what prevents

shortcutting of particular commands.



Firebuild can also generate a report about the whole build process with `firebuild -r `

that helps finding the slowest parts of the build and also helps finding what could not be shortcut.



#### Clang PCH's embedded timestamps prevents shortcutting



Clang embeds timestamps in precompiled headers (PCHs) by default on Linux in the PCH generation

steps (`-emit-pch`). To let Firebuild cache PCHs use `-Xclang -fno-pch-timestamp` with `clang`.



## How it compares to other build accelerators?



### Ccache, sccache and other compiler wrappers



Ccache works by having an understanding of how the C/C++ compiler works and it supports only the

C/C++/Obj-C family of languages. Sccache adds Rust on top of those, and the concept is the same.



Firebuild supports accelerating any command that behaves reasonably well, like not downloading

files from the network to produce output. As a result you can accelerate the linker (even with LTO)

, or the configure and code generation steps of C/C++ project builds, which together made it

consistently beat ccache in [our testing](https://github.com/firebuild/firebuild-infra/pull/59).



Firebuild also supports many other compilers, such as Fortran, Java (including Javadoc

generation) and Scala compilers which are not accelerated by ccache.



### Bazel and similar build systems



Bazel requires maintaining the Bazel build system, while Firebuilds works with any

build system that does not implement its own caching. You just need to prefix your build command

with firebuild, like it is done for accelerating bash's build in the autopkgtest:

[debian/tests/recompile-bash](debian/tests/recompile-bash)



```

...

Build times:

real1=88.28

user1=113.08

sys1=26.20

real2=12.38

user2=8.31

sys2=5.67

CPU time of the second build was 10% of the first build

autopkgtest [14:24:12]: test recompile-bash: -----------------------]

recompile-bash       PASS

```

You can even accelerate a single command without any build system: `firebuild `.



### Firebuild shortcomings



Firebuild does not support [compressing cache entries](https://github.com/firebuild/firebuild/issues/1087), nor [remote caches](https://github.com/firebuild/firebuild/issues/19) yet.



Firebuild's interception works by preloading libfirebuild.so to the intercepted processes and interposing libc and system calls. As a result it can't intercept nor shortcut statically linked binaries.



## Installation



Firebuild is available in [Arch Linux (AUR)](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firebuild),

[Debian](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firebuild),

[Ubuntu](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firebuild),

and other Debian derivatives.



Back-ported packages for supported Ubuntu releases can be downloaded from the [official PPA](https://launchpad.net/~firebuild/+archive/ubuntu/stable):



    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:firebuild/stable

    sudo apt install firebuild



If you would like to use `firebuild` in your GitHub pipeline there is a [GitHub Action](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/firebuild-for-github-actions) to do just that.



## Building from source



### On Linux



For Ubuntu earlier than 21.04 (xxhash earlier than 0.8.0 or Valgrind earlier than 3.17.0):



    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:firebuild/build-deps

    

Install the build dependencies:



    sudo apt update

    sudo apt install clang cmake bats bc libconfig++-dev node-d3 libxxhash-dev libjemalloc-dev libtsl-hopscotch-map-dev moreutils python3-jinja2 fakeroot



Build:



    cmake . && make check



Install:



    sudo make install



### On Mac



Install the build dependencies:



    brew bundle



Build:



    cmake .

    HOMEBREW_PREFIX=$(ls -d /opt/homebrew /usr/local 2> /dev/null| head -n1)

    export XML_CATALOG_FILES=${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/etc/xml/catalog

    export PYTHONPATH=$(ls -d ${HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/Cellar/jinja2-cli/*/libexec/lib/*/site-packages | tail -n1)

    make check



Install:



    sudo make install



Set up the system to allow intercepting builds: https://firebuild.com/setup-macos