docs/source/developers/cpp/development.rst

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.. highlight:: console
.. _development-cpp:

======================
Development Guidelines
======================

This section provides information for developers who wish to contribute to the
C++ codebase.

.. note::

   Since most of the project's developers work on Linux or macOS, not all
   features or developer tools are uniformly supported on Windows. If you are
   on Windows, have a look at :ref:`developers-cpp-windows`.

Compiler warning levels
=======================

The ``BUILD_WARNING_LEVEL`` CMake option switches between sets of predetermined
compiler warning levels that we use for code tidiness. For release builds, the
default warning level is ``PRODUCTION``, while for debug builds the default is
``CHECKIN``.

When using ``CHECKIN`` for debug builds, ``-Werror`` is added when using gcc
and clang, causing build failures for any warning, and ``/WX`` is set with MSVC
having the same effect.

Running unit tests
==================

The ``-DARROW_BUILD_TESTS=ON`` CMake option enables building of unit test
executables.  You can then either run them individually, by launching the
desired executable, or run them all at once by launching the ``ctest``
executable (which is part of the CMake suite).

A possible invocation is something like::

   $ ctest -j16 --output-on-failure

where the ``-j16`` option runs up to 16 tests in parallel, taking advantage
of multiple CPU cores and hardware threads.

Running benchmarks
==================

The ``-DARROW_BUILD_BENCHMARKS=ON`` CMake option enables building of benchmark
executables.  You can then run benchmarks individually by launching the
corresponding executable from the command line, e.g.::

   $ ./build/release/arrow-builder-benchmark

.. note::
   For meaningful benchmark numbers, it is very strongly recommended to build
   in ``Release`` mode, so as to enable compiler optimizations.

Code Style, Linting, and CI
===========================

This project follows `Google's C++ Style Guide
<https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html>`_ with these exceptions:

* We relax the line length restriction to 90 characters.
* We use the ``NULLPTR`` macro in header files (instead of ``nullptr``) defined
  in ``src/arrow/util/macros.h`` to support building C++/CLI (ARROW-1134).
* We relax the guide's rules regarding structs.  For public headers we should
  use struct only for objects that are principally simple data containers where
  it is OK to expose all the internal members and any methods are primarily
  conveniences.  For private headers the rules are relaxed further and structs
  can be used where convenient for types that do not need access control even
  though they may not be simple data containers.
* We prefer pointers for output and input/output parameters (the
  style guide recommends mutable references in some cases).

Our continuous integration builds on GitHub Actions run the unit test
suites on a variety of platforms and configuration, including using
Address Sanitizer and Undefined Behavior Sanitizer to check for various
patterns of misbehaviour such as memory leaks. In addition, the
codebase is subjected to a number of code style and code cleanliness checks.

In order to have a passing CI build, your modified Git branch must pass the
following checks:

* C++ builds with the project's active version of ``clang`` without
  compiler warnings with ``-DBUILD_WARNING_LEVEL=CHECKIN``. Note that
  there are classes of warnings (such as ``-Wdocumentation``, see more
  on this below) that are not caught by ``gcc``.
* Passes various C++ (and others) style checks by running
  ``pre-commit run --show-diff-on-failure --color=always --all-files
  cpp``.

On pull requests, the "Dev / Lint" pipeline will run these checks, and report
what files/lines need to be fixed, if any.

Checking for ABI and API stability
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To build ABI compliance reports, you need to install the two tools
``abi-dumper`` and ``abi-compliance-checker``.

Build Arrow C++ in Debug mode, alternatively you could use ``-Og`` which also
builds with the necessary symbols but includes a bit of code optimization.
Once the build has finished, you can generate ABI reports using:

.. code-block:: shell

   abi-dumper -lver 9 debug/libarrow.so -o ABI-9.dump

The above version number is freely selectable. As we want to compare versions,
you should now ``git checkout`` the version you want to compare it to and re-run
the above command using a different version number. Once both reports are
generated, you can build a comparison report using

.. code-block:: shell

   abi-compliance-checker -l libarrow -d1 ABI-PY-9.dump -d2 ABI-PY-10.dump

The report is then generated in ``compat_reports/libarrow`` as a HTML.

API Documentation
=================

We use Doxygen style comments (``///``) in header files for comments
that we wish to show up in API documentation for classes and
functions.

When using ``clang`` and building with
``-DBUILD_WARNING_LEVEL=CHECKIN``, the ``-Wdocumentation`` flag is
used which checks for some common documentation inconsistencies, like
documenting some, but not all function parameters with ``\param``. See
the `LLVM documentation warnings section
<https://releases.llvm.org/7.0.1/tools/clang/docs/DiagnosticsReference.html#wdocumentation>`_
for more about this.

While we publish the API documentation as part of the main Sphinx-based
documentation site, you can also build the C++ API documentation anytime using
Doxygen. Run the following command from the ``cpp/apidoc`` directory:

.. code-block:: shell

   doxygen Doxyfile

This requires `Doxygen <https://www.doxygen.org>`_ to be installed.

Apache Parquet Development
==========================

To build the C++ libraries for Apache Parquet, add the flag
``-DARROW_PARQUET=ON`` when invoking CMake.
To build Apache Parquet with encryption support, add the flag
``-DPARQUET_REQUIRE_ENCRYPTION=ON`` when invoking CMake. The Parquet libraries and unit tests
can be built with the ``parquet`` make target:

.. code-block:: shell

   make parquet

On Linux and macOS if you do not have Apache Thrift installed on your system,
or you are building with ``-DThrift_SOURCE=BUNDLED``, you must install
``bison`` and ``flex`` packages. On Windows we handle these build dependencies
automatically when building Thrift from source.

Running ``ctest -L unittest`` will run all built C++ unit tests, while ``ctest -L
parquet`` will run only the Parquet unit tests. The unit tests depend on an
environment variable ``PARQUET_TEST_DATA`` that depends on a git submodule to the
repository https://github.com/apache/parquet-testing:

.. code-block:: shell

   git submodule update --init
   export PARQUET_TEST_DATA=$ARROW_ROOT/cpp/submodules/parquet-testing/data

Here ``$ARROW_ROOT`` is the absolute path to the Arrow codebase.

Arrow Flight RPC
================

In addition to the Arrow dependencies, Flight requires:

* gRPC (>= 1.14, roughly)
* Protobuf (>= 3.6, earlier versions may work)
* c-ares (used by gRPC)

By default, Arrow will try to download and build these dependencies
when building Flight.

The optional ``flight`` libraries and tests can be built by passing
``-DARROW_FLIGHT=ON``.

.. code-block:: shell

   cmake .. -DARROW_FLIGHT=ON -DARROW_BUILD_TESTS=ON
   make

You can also use existing installations of the extra dependencies.
When building, set the environment variables ``gRPC_ROOT`` and/or
``Protobuf_ROOT`` and/or ``c-ares_ROOT``.

We are developing against recent versions of gRPC, and the versions. The
``libgrpc`` package available from https://conda-forge.org/ is one reliable
way to obtain gRPC in a cross-platform way. You may try using system libraries
for gRPC and Protobuf, but these are likely to be too old. On macOS, you can
try `Homebrew <https://brew.sh/>`_:

.. code-block:: shell

   brew install grpc