Building ColumnStore from Source

Build MariaDB ColumnStore from source for development and debugging. Check out the MariaDB server source with submodules, then build and install ColumnStore with the bootstrap_mcs.sh script.

This page describes how to build MariaDB ColumnStore from source, for development and debugging.

ColumnStore is not built on its own. It is a storage engine that lives inside the MariaDB server source tree as a git submodule at storage/columnstore/columnstore, so you build it as part of MariaDB server.

Supported Distributions

The build script supports the following Linux distributions:

• Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04

• Debian 11 and 12

• Rocky Linux 8 and 9

The authoritative, up-to-date list of supported distributions is defined in build/bootstrap_mcs.sh (the DISTRO_OPTIONS array). Check the script if you are on a newer release.

Get the Source Code

Clone the MariaDB server repository. Use SSH:

git clone [e-mail]:MariaDB/server.git

Or HTTPS:

git clone https://github.com/MariaDB/server.git

The server repository contains many git submodules, including ColumnStore. Check them out:

cd server
git submodule update --init --recursive

This also checks out the ColumnStore source at storage/columnstore/columnstore.

To build a specific ColumnStore branch, check it out in the submodule:

cd storage/columnstore/columnstore
git checkout <columnstore-branch>
git config --global --add safe.directory "$(pwd)"

If you do not have developer access to the ColumnStore repository and want to contribute, fork it and update the submodule's origin remote to point at your fork.

Build and Install

The bootstrap_mcs.sh script builds and installs ColumnStore into your system. Run it from the ColumnStore submodule directory:

cd server/storage/columnstore/columnstore
sudo build/bootstrap_mcs.sh --install-deps

The --install-deps flag installs the build dependencies before compiling.

To select the build type, pass --build-type with Debug or RelWithDebInfo:

sudo build/bootstrap_mcs.sh --install-deps --build-type Debug

Build Native OS Packages

To build native OS packages (.rpm or .deb) instead of installing directly, add --build-packages:

cd server/storage/columnstore/columnstore
sudo build/bootstrap_mcs.sh --install-deps --build-packages

The resulting packages are written to the build directory.

Packages are built for the operating system you are running on. For example, running --build-packages on Rocky Linux produces RPMs for Rocky Linux.

For the full list of options, run the script with --help or read build/bootstrap_mcs.sh directly.