Undefined references to some absl functions when building from scratch

[mdorier]

I'm trying to build redpanda from scratch. I have the dependencies installed (cmake doesn't complain about any of them missing), but when I do "make", at about 30% I end up with this:

[ 31%] Linking CXX executable test_secure_hashing_rpunit
ld.lld: error: undefined symbol: absl::lts_20240722::container_internal::kSooControl
>>> referenced by crypto.cc
>>>               crypto.cc.o:(crypto::internal::get_md(crypto::digest_type)) in archive ../../crypto/libv_v_crypto.a

And a bunch of other undefined references, all related to absl. I have abseil 20240722.0 installed (built as static libraries), and cmake found it when I called cmake. Any idea why this happens?

[mdorier]

Ok I figured it out: I install abseil 20240722.0 as a dependency to something (protocol buffer I think), so it was available for find_package to find. But redpanda's dependencies.cmake downloads its own abseil (20230802.1) as part of the build process, and I guess it then includes the external abseil but tries to link against the internal one. I fixed it by making redpanda download the same version I had.

Now I'm getting another undefined reference:

[ 35%] Linking CXX executable zstd_tests_rpunit
ld.lld: error: undefined symbol: typeinfo for snappy::Sink
>>> referenced by snappy_standard_compressor.cc
>>>               snappy_standard_compressor.cc.o:(typeinfo for compression::snappy_iobuf_sink) in archive ../libv_v_compression.a
>>> did you mean: vtable for snappy::Sink
>>> defined in: /home/ubuntu/Code/inst-redpanda/spack/opt/spack/linux-ubuntu22.04-aarch64/gcc-13.1.0/snappy-1.2.1-2pnuhyd4nf3vvike7zxyzkebtd5cjwog/lib/libsnappy.so.1.2.1

ld.lld: error: undefined symbol: typeinfo for snappy::Source
>>> referenced by snappy_standard_compressor.cc
>>>               snappy_standard_compressor.cc.o:(typeinfo for compression::snappy_iobuf_source) in archive ../libv_v_compression.a
>>> did you mean: vtable for snappy::Source
>>> defined in: /home/ubuntu/Code/inst-redpanda/spack/opt/spack/linux-ubuntu22.04-aarch64/gcc-13.1.0/snappy-1.2.1-2pnuhyd4nf3vvike7zxyzkebtd5cjwog/lib/libsnappy.so.1.2.1
clang++: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

As far as I know, redpanda isn't building snappy by itself, I installed it myself. I tried building it as a shared library and as a static one, the problem is the same. Undefined typeinfo is usually the sign of having compiled with -fno-rtti, but I it doesn't seem that snappy uses -fno-rtti unless it's on Windows.

[mdorier]

I didn't read snappy's cmake file right, it disables RTTI on all platforms. I had to manually edit its cmake file and build it manually. Now on to the next problems...

[rockwotj]

We are updating our build to using Bazel - can you give that a try?

[mdorier]

I started giving it a try but for now I have some errors from Bazel (and it's not as easy to understand where they are coming from as when using cmake). I'm looking at the install-dependencies.sh file to try to understand what I should install. I am on a supercomputer without admin access so I can't use that file to install them, I have to build them myself, including their dependencies, using the Spack package manager. If you happen to have a list of these dependencies (rather than a list of packages for specific Linux distributions), could you point me to it?

[rockwotj]

Sorry I don't have a list of dependencies needed. I might suggest if you have access to docker your try running in an ubuntu container, otherwise that is not a build environment we use nor have any knowledge of! If you run into specific build errors I am happy to help diagnose however.

[dotnwat]

@mdorier the list of dependencies are in bazel/install-deps.sh. as far as helping goes, like @rockwotj mentioned, it may be useful to do this in a docker container and then you can share the dockerfile with us so that we can reproduce the issues locally.

[mdorier]

Sorry for the late reply. I finally got around to trying things in a docker container and making a Dockerfile to reproduce the problem. I'm attaching the following files in an Archive.zip:

• Dockerfile
• spack.yaml : used to install dependencies using the Spack package manager
• package.py : an updated file for Spack to be able to build bazel 7.4.0
• log.txt: the build log from bazel

This can be reproduced as follows:

First, build the docker image with docker build -t redpanda-spack-ubuntu24 .; the Docker file will download Spack, update the package.py file for bazel, copy spack.yaml, then create an environment and install the requested dependencies listed in the spack.yaml file. It's going to take a bit of time: the whole point of Spack is to build everything from source, as it's used on supercomputers.

Next, run the docker container with docker run -it redpanda-spack-ubuntu24. When in the docker, run the following commands to make Spack and its packages available:

source /opt/spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh
spack env activate myenv

Next, clone redpanda, switch the the latest release, and run bazel:

cd /home/ubuntu
git clone https://github.com/redpanda-data/redpanda.git
cd redpanda
git checkout v24.3.1
bazel build --config=release //...

I have no knowledge of Bazel so I can't understand what the error messages mean. I've seen one of them referring to not finding ragel, yet ragel is very much available once the spack environment is loaded. (this is not the only error).

Thanks for your help!

[dotnwat]

git checkout v24.3.1

Bazel is not yet supported. The upstream dev branch should always be working with Bazel, but YMMV with release branches. We are targetting v25.1 as the first release with official Bazel support.

not finding ragel, yet ragel is very much available once the spack environment is loaded.

The issue may be that merely having ragel in your PATH is not sufficient. Maybe try passing --action_env=PATH to the build command. Where does Spack install things? Are you on a normal Ubuntu box? If so, can you run bazel/install-deps.sh -- that is all you should need.

[mdorier]

I tried with --action_env=PATH but didn't succeed.

My issue with bazel/install-deps.sh is that ultimately I want to be able to build redpanda on a supercomputer, where I don't have sudo access. On that, any dependency I may need has to be built from source, which I am doing using Spack. The Docker image I sent tries to reproduce this scenario. All the dependencies are available in /opt/view but I have a hard time making bazel find them. The PATH variable, for instance, includes /opt/view/bin, but I suspect other variables are needed by bazel.

Note: I also wanted to try just using the precompiled binaries listed here, but the provided links don't exist. Are precompiled binaries available somewhere else?

[mdorier]

Actually the links simply have a typo: they have version 23.3.6 as the folder but then version 24.2.7 in the archive name. Easy to correct. I'll give the pre-built binary a try.