[Questions] Building RabbitMQ from Source on Ubuntu - invalid(?) mk files

[inikulshin]

Community Support Policy

• I have read RabbitMQ's Community Support Policy
• I run RabbitMQ 4.x, the only series currently covered by community support
• I promise to provide all relevant information (versions, logs from all nodes, rabbitmq-diagnostics output, detailed reproduction steps)

RabbitMQ version used

4.0.7

Erlang version used

26.2.x

Operating system (distribution) used

Ubuntu (docker, FROM ubuntu:22.04)

What problem are you trying to solve?

I'm trying to build rabbitmq-server with my custom plugins inside docker image (FROM ubuntu:22.04)

I've got the following error from make all command:

rabbitmq-components.mk:1: *** missing separator.  Stop.
make[1]: Entering directory '/docker/plugins/deps/rabbit_common'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/docker/plugins/deps/rabbit_common'
make: *** [erlang.mk:3753: deps] Error 2

I can workaround it by adding include before ../../rabbitmq-components.mk in rabbitmq-components.mk and all other such places. But I suppose there should be another "workaround".

I'm using default make from the image, which is:

[8/9] RUN make  --version
GNU Make 4.3
...

Update:

Not related to docker or WSL, but to symbolic links.

Many ways to get sources from GitHub to Windows silently (or almost silently) convert symbolic links into files with content equals to path.

Right way to do it is:

git config --global core.symlinks true
git clone https://github.com/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server.git

[michaelklishin]

How was 4.1.0-beta.5 then built?

The build infrastructure is open source (except for certificates, secrets and internal variables):

• rabbitmq/build-env-images
• rabbitmq/server-packages

[michaelklishin]

Every tier one plugin includes the top-level rabbitmq-components.mk and enables two erlang.mk plugins:

DEP_EARLY_PLUGINS = rabbit_common/mk/rabbitmq-early-plugin.mk
DEP_PLUGINS = rabbit_common/mk/rabbitmq-plugin.mk

include ../../rabbitmq-components.mk
include ../../erlang.mk

[inikulshin]

I can reproduce it on my local PC (Windows 11 Enterprise, Docker Desktop 4.38.0) with the following simple dockerfile:

FROM rabbitmqdevenv/build-env-26.2

ARG WORKDIR=/docker
WORKDIR $WORKDIR/plugins

COPY . .

RUN gmake all

#7 [4/4] RUN gmake all
#7 0.319 gmake[1]: Entering directory '/docker/plugins/deps/rabbit_common'
#7 0.319 gmake[1]: Leaving directory '/docker/plugins/deps/rabbit_common'
#7 0.319 erlang.mk:1: *** missing separator.  Stop.
#7 0.319 gmake: *** [erlang.mk:3753: deps] Error 2
EXEC : #7 error : process "/bin/sh -c gmake all" did not complete successfully: exit code: 2

Real mystery. Maybe different default shell?
I also couldn't find any information about possibility to omit make's include directive like you did...

[michaelklishin]

Our team does not use Windows for RabbitMQ development. WSL and whatnot can ship with a really old version of GMake or something like that.

[inikulshin]

@michaelklishin updated a question with answer.

[michaelklishin]

Oh, so a clone on Windows, even under WSL, can quietly "drop" all symbolic links without core.symlinks set to true… Thank you for reporting back.

[inikulshin]

Oh, so a clone on Windows, even under WSL, can quietly "drop" all symbolic links without core.symlinks set to true… Thank you for reporting back.

I started with "Download ZIP" and the github's zip preserve symlinks. But extracting symlinks from archive (with 7Zip) required additional permissions (but continued with files instead of symlinks). File explorer also extracts without symlinks. Copying rabbitmq-server directory also didn't keep symlinks (only moving did).

I ran git clone outside docker on Windows (requires -c core.symlinks=true) and used COPY . . in dockerfile (at least this one preserves symlinks).

git clone is the most reliable.