Redland RDF Application Framework - Installation Instructions

1. Getting the sources

There are several ways to get the sources. The most stable and tested versions are the sources shipped with each release and these are recommended as the first place to start. If you want to get a newer set, then there are nightly snapshots made of the development sources, which may not yet be committed to the CVS. For the latest developent sources, anonymous CVS access is available but this may require some configuring of developer tools that are not needed for the snapshot releases.

The source bundle and package files contain all the HTML files and documentation provided on the web site.

1.1. Getting released sources

Every release comes with full sources and these are available from http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/source/ master site as well as the SourceForge site.

1.2. Getting nightly source snapshots

Each night a snapshot distribution is attempted using the current development sources (that may not even be in the CVS), using the make dist target of the automake system. If this target completes, these snapshots are then made available from: http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/dist/snapshots/source/ (binary snapshot releases are also attempted each night from the same sources).

1.3. Getting the sources from CVS

  # sh, bash, ...
  CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ilrt.org:/cvsroot
  export CVSROOT
  # csh, tcsh, ...
  setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anonymous@cvs.ilrt.org:/cvsroot

  cvs login
Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@cvs.ilrt.org:2401/cvsroot
CVS password: 
  [return]

  cvs checkout redland

  cd redland

At this stage, or after a cvs update you will need to create the automake and autoconf derived files, as described below in Create the configure program by using the autogen.sh script.

Building Redland in this way requires some particular development tools not needed when building from snapshot releases - automake, autoconf, swig and those also required by Raptor if it is built See the Raptor install document for the details. The autogen.sh script looks for the newest versions of the auto* tools and checks that they meet the minimum versions.

2. Configuring and building

Redland uses the GNU automake and autoconf to handle system dependency checking. It is developed and built on x86 Linux (Redhat), but is also used extensively locally on various versions of sparc Sun Solaris 2.x. I also test it via SourceForges' compile farm and it builds on Debian Linux (x86, Alpha, PPC and Sparc, IA64), FreeBSD (x86) and Apple OSX.

Configure tries very hard to find several programs and libraries that Redland might need. These include the language APIs (perl, python, etc.), the storage modules (Berkeley/Sleepycat DB, MySQL, 3store), the XML parsers -- via Raptor's configure -- and various others. A summary of the modular parts found is given at the end of the configure run. Several options to configure given below can be used to point to locations or names of dependencies that cannot be automatically determined.

2.1. Create configure program

If there is no configure program, you can create it by running the autogen.sh script, as long as you have the automake and autoconf tools. This is done by:

  ./autogen.sh

and you can also pass along arguments intended for configure (see below for what these are):

  ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local/somewhere

Alternatively you can run the automake and autoconf programs by hand with:

  aclocal; autoheader; automake --add-missing; autoconf

(Ignore any warnings from autoconf about AC_TRY_RUN, it is caused by an autoconf macro and seems to be an autoconf bug.)

2.2. Options for configure

See also the generic GNU installation instructions in INSTALL for information about general options such as --prefix etc.

--disable-assert

Disable compiling run-time assertions. In maintainer mode, assertion failures are fatal.

--disable-assert-messages

Disable compiling run-time assertion failure messages. In maintainer mode, assertion failures are fatal after the assertion failure is reported.

--enable-digests=LIST

Select the list of content digests to be included if the are availble. The valid list of digests are: md5 sha1 ripem160 (the default). The digest functions can be provided by external libraries such as the OpenSSL libcrypto library or by provided portable versions (only MD5 supported in this release).

--enable-parsers=LIST

Select the list of RDF parsers to be included if the are availble. The valid list of RDF parsers is currently only raptor (the default) since the older repat parser has been removed. Raptor uses either of libxml2 (prefered) or expat. Redland requires the Raptor parser for other functionality, so it cannot be disabled.

--with-bdb=ROOT

Enable use of the Berkeley / Sleepycat DB library installed at ROOT. That means ROOT/include must contain the BDB header db.h and ROOT/lib must contain the library libdb.a (or whatever shared library version/name your system uses).

Berkeley DB is now known as Sleepycat DB (after version 2) and distributed and supported by SleepyCat Software. Versions 4.1.25, 4.1.24, 4.0.14, 3.3.11, 3.2.9, 3.1.17, 3.1.14, 2.7.7 and 2.4.14 have been tested and work. Some systems do not come installed with a working Berkeley/Sleepycat DB so on those systems, Redland will have no persistent storage unless BDB is built separately and enabled via this option.

Note: If you change installed versions of BDB then you will need to re-configure Redland carefully to let it discover the features of the newer BDB as follows:

  rm -f config.cache
  make clean
  ./configure ... # any configure arguments here

(plus you might need to use the dbX_upgrade utility to update the BDB database files to the formats supported by the newer version X - see the BDB documentation to find out if this is required.)

If the BerkeleyDB is installed in different places from ROOT/lib (library) and ROOT/include (header) or the library name is something that can't be worked out automatically, then you can use the next set of options to specify them.

If all of the BDB options are omitted, Redland will do a best efforts guess to find the newest BDB installation but this may not work for all configurations.

--with-bdb-lib=LIBDIR
--with-bdb-include=INCDIR
--with-bdb-name=NAME

Use Berkeley DB with the installed library in LIBDIR and the db.h header in INCDIR and the installed library called NAME like -lNAME. This is relative to LIBDIR. All of these options can be omitted and configure will try to find or guess the values from the system.

For example, to compile redland on OSX with fink might require a configure line something like this:

  ./configure --with-bdb-lib=/sw/lib \
              --with-bdb-include=/sw/include/db3

The name of the BDB library was correctly discovered for this configuration, as db-3.3.

If all of the BDB options are omitted, Redland will do a best efforts guess to find the newest BDB installation but this may not work for all configurations.

(At present, Redland knows of the default /sw Fink installation directory and will look there for BDB installs)

--with-java(=JAVA)
--with-perl(=PERL)
--with-php(=PHP)
--with-python(=PYTHON)
--with-ruby(=RUBY)
--with-tcl(=TCL)

Enable the given language APIs - the default is to build no language APIs automatically. If the option value is omitted or yes, configure will guess the location of the language command. If the argument value is no or no option is given, the language API will be disabled (the default). Otherwise, the argument is used as the appropriate language command to use. For example --with-ruby=ruby1.8 will use the 'ruby1.8' binary, whereas --with-ruby will use 'ruby'.

--with-jdk=DIR

Choose the location of the Java JDK to use for building the Java API with Java JNI. If omitted, Redland will guess likely locations but this is not guaranteed to work.

--with-libwww

Enable use of the W3C libwww, if available. configure will automatically enable this if the libwww-config program can be found in the path unless disabled by setting this option to no. libwww is not used at present.

--with-mysql(=CONFIG|yes|no)

Enable use of the Redland MySQL 3.x, 4.x triple store backend using CONFIG for the mysql_config program. The default when either no argument is given, or --with-mysql alone, is to search for mysql_config on the search PATH. With --with-mysql=no, this store is disabled.

Versions 3.23.58 and 4.0.4 have been tested and work.

--with-openssl-digests

Enable the content digests provided by the OpenSSL libcrypto library (MD5, SHA1 and RIPEMD160) if the library is available. configure will automatically enable this unless disabled by setting this option to no.

--with-raptor= system or internal

This option tells redland to use either the system installed version of raptor or the internal version. If the option is omittted, redland will guess and choose either the system one, if new enough or the internal one (always present). If --with-raptor=system is used and redland discovers that the system raptor is too old, a warning will be given but the configuration will continue.

--with-threestore(=CONFIG|yes|no)

Enable use of the AKT project 3store triple store backend using CONFIG for the 3store-config program. The default when either no argument is given, or --with-threestore alone, is to search for the 3store-config on the search PATH. With --with-threestore=no, this store is disabled.

--with-xml-parser=NAME

Pick an XML parser to use for Raptor - either libxml (default) or expat. If this option is not given, either will be used, with libxml preferred if both are present. libxml must be present as a system library but expat is always available since it is provided inside Redland.

Raptor has been tested with various combinations of these libraries that are described further in the Raptor install documentation.

WARNING If the libwww or Sleepycat/Berkeley DB libraries are installed in a non-default directory, when the final linking occurs, the libraries may not be found at run time. To fix this you will need to use a system-specific method of passing this information to the run-time loader. On most systems you can set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to include the directory where the libwww libraries are found. (On OSX this is DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH) You can also configure it via a system wide file - see the ld, ld.so orld.so.1 manual pages for details. The alternative, to link libwww statically, works but is difficult to enable.

2.3 Configuring

If everything is in the default place, do:

   ./configure

More commonly you will be doing something like this, when giving the installation location of Berkeley/Sleeypcat DB:

   ./configure --with-bdb=/usr/local/berkeleydb

If you are having problems with configuring several times when adding or removing options, you may have to tidy up first with either of these:

   make clean
   rm -f config.cache

2.4 Compiling

   make

2.5. Testing

You can build and run the built-in tests for Redland with:

    make check

which should emit lots of exciting test messages to the screen but conclude with something like:
All n tests passed
if everything works correctly.

If the language-specific --with-perl etc. arguments have been given to configure, the top-level make check will run these tests for the enabled languages in addition to the core tests. These may fail if the main redland libraries (librdf and libraptor) are not installed. So in this case you should do:

   make install

before trying to run the language-specific tests.

The language-specific tests can also be built and run with:

   cd language
   make check

(If you have got all the required subsidiary development tools, you can also do make distcheck which does a longer check that the distribution installation, configuring and building works. This does not perform any additional core testing).

2.6 Installing the library

To install the C library (static and shared typically) plus the interface header (.h) files do:

   make install

The language-specific interfaces are installed in this step when they are enabled with the --with-perl etc. arguments of configure

Otherwise, the language-specific installations can be made with:

  cd language
  make install

3. Using the library

Once the library has been configured and built, there are several C example programs that can be used. They are in the examples sub-directory and can be built with:

   cd examples
   make

(This may be done by the initial 'make' automatically).

There are many examples for all of the language interfaces in the corresponding sub-directories such as perl/example.pl which may be easier to modify.

If no Berkeley DB was found by configure, some of the examples will fail since there is no on-disk storage system available. To change them to use the in-memory hashes, edit the lines reading something like

  storage=librdf_new_storage("hashes",
                             "test", 
                             "hash_type='bdb',dir='.'");

to read

  storage=librdf_new_storage("hashes", 
                             "test",
                             "hash_type='memory',dir='.'");

3.1 rdfproc

The rdfproc utility in the utils directory exercises the majority of the useful parts of the Redland API and can demonstrate many ways to store, search and manipulate the graph from C.

3.2. example1.c

example1 uses a RDF parser, if you have one available, to parse a URI of RDF/XML content, store it in multple Berkeley DB hashes on the disk and run queries against them. It takes two arguments, the first the URI of the RDF/XML content (or file:filename) and the second, optional one, is the name of the RDF parser to use. At present these can be sirpac or libwww

3.3. example2.c

example2 does not use a RDF parser, but reads from a simple triple dump format and again stores the data on disk in multiple Berkeley DB hashes.

3.4. example3.c

example3 contains a 10 line main program that creates an RDF model, a statement, adds it to the model and stores it on disk.

3.5. example4.c

example4 contains an example of how to serialize an RDF model to a syntax.

3. Using the Perl interface

See the Redland Perl Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from Perl.

4. Using the Python interface

See the Redland Python Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from Python.

5. Using the Tcl interface

See the Redland Tcl Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from Tcl, and/or Tcl/Tk.

6. Using the Java interface

See the Redland Java Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from Java.

7. Using the Ruby interface

See the Redland Ruby Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from Ruby.

8. Using the PHP interface

See the Redland PHP Interface document for full information on installing and using Redland from PHP.


Copyright 2000-2004 Dave Beckett, Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol