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Developer Tips

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This page is a collection of tips and howtos geared towards developers of Alluxio.

Change a Thrift RPC definition

Alluxio uses thrift for RPC communication between clients and servers. The .thrift files defined in common/src/thrift/ are used to auto-generate Java code for calling the RPCs on clients and implementing the RPCs on servers. To change a Thrift definition, you must first install the Thrift compiler. If you have brew, you can do this by running

brew install thrift

Then to regenerate the Java code, run

bin/alluxio thriftGen

Change a Protocol Buffer Message

Alluxio uses protocol buffers to read and write journal messages. The .proto files defined in servers/src/proto/journal/ are used to auto-generate Java definitions for the protocol buffer messages. To change one of these messages, first read about updating a message type to make sure your change will not break backwards compatibility. Next, install protoc. If you have brew, you can do this by running

brew install protobuf

Then to regenerate the Java code, run

bin/alluxio protoGen

Full list of the commands in bin/alluxio

Most commands in bin/alluxio are for developers. The following table explains the description and the syntax of each command.

</tr>
CommandArgsDescription
format [-s] Format Alluxio Master and all Workers. The option [-s] indicates that the command should only format when the underfs is local and doesn't already exist.
formatWorker None Format Alluxio Worker storage on this local node.
bootstrapConf <ALLUXIO_MASTER_HOSTNAME> Generate the bootstrap config file alluxio-env.sh with the specified ALLUXIO_MASTER_HOSTNAME, if the config file doesn't exist.
fs [fs-commands] Interact with Alluxio in command line style for basic file system operations. See Command Line for more information.
loadufs <TachyonPath> <UfsPath> [ExcludePathPrefixes] Loads files under UfsPath to the given AlluxioPath. ExcludePathPrefixes can be a set of prefixes which are separated by ';'. The paths with a prefix in ExcludePathPrefixes will not be loaded.
runTest <Example> <ReadType> <WriteType> Run an end-to-end test on a Alluxio cluster. Example should be "Basic" or "BasicNonByteBuffer". ReadType should be "CACHE_PROMOTE", "CACHE", or "NO_CACHE". WriteType should be "MUST_CACHE", "CACHE_THROUGH" or "THROUGH".
runTests None Run all end-to-end tests on a Alluxio cluster. That is, execute the runTest command with all the possible args.
journalCrashTest [-creates <arg>] [-deletes <arg>] [-renames <arg>] [-maxAlive <arg>] [-testDir <arg>] [-totalTime <arg>] [-help] Test the Master Journal System in a crash scenario. Try alluxio journalCrashTest -help to see the meanings of each argument in detail, or you can run it without args by default.
readJournal [-help] [-noTimeout] Read a Alluxio journal file from stdin and write a human-readable version of it to stdout. You can run this on the journal file as alluxio readJournal < journal/FileSystemMaster/log.out.
killAll <WORD> Kill processes whose pid or command contains the WORD specified by the user.
copyDir <PATH> Copy the PATH to all worker nodes.
clearCache None Clear OS buffer cache of the machine. This command needs the root permission.
thriftGen None Generate all thrift code. See Change a Thrift RPC definition.
protoGen None Generate all protocol buffer code. See Change a Protocol Buffer Message.
version None Print Alluxio version.
validateConf None Validate Alluxio conf.

In addition, these commands have different prerequisites. The prerequisite for the format, formatWorker, journalCrashTest, readJournal, version and validateConf commands is that you have already built Alluxio (see Build Alluxio Master Branch about how to build Alluxio manually). Further, the prerequisite for the fs, loadufs, runTest and runTests commands is that you have a running Alluxio system.