Setup StarRocks FE development environment on IDEA
This tutorial is based on macOS and has been tested on Apple Chip(M1, M2). Even if you are not using macOS, you can also refer to this tutorial.
Requirements
Thrift 0.13
If you installed Thrift directly with brew, you will find that there is no version 0.13, you can use the following command:
brew tap-new $USER/local-tap
brew extract --version='0.13.0' thrift $USER/local-tap
brew install thrift@0.13.0
After installing Thrift successfully, you can check by executing following command:
$ thrift -version
Thrift version 0.13.0
Protobuf
Just use the latest version v3, because the latest version of Protobuf is compatible with the v2 version of the Protobuf used in StarRocks.
brew install protobuf
Maven
brew install maven
Openjdk 1.8 or 11
brew install openjdk@11
Python3
MacOS is already installed by default.
Setup thirdparty directory
Create installed/bin directory in /thirdparty.
mkdir -p thirdparty/installed/bin
Then create soft link for Thrift and Protobuf respectively.
ln -s /opt/homebrew/Cellar/thrift@0.13.0/0.13.0/bin/thrift thirdparty/installed/bin/thrift
ln -s /opt/homebrew/Cellar/protobuf/3.19.4/bin/protoc thirdparty/installed/bin/protoc
Everyone's Thrift and Protobuf installation directories may be different, you can use the brew list command to inspect:
brew list thrift@0.13.0
brew list protobuf
Setting environment variables
export JAVA_HOME="/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openjdk@11/11.0.15"
export PYTHON="/usr/bin/python3"
export STARROCKS_THIRDPARTY=/Users/smith/Code/starrocks/thirdparty
Generate source code
Many source files in FE need to be generated manually, otherwise IDEA will report an error due to missing files. Execute the following command to automatically generate:
cd gensrc
make clean
make
Compile FE
Enter fe directory and use Maven to compile:
cd fe
mvn install -DskipTests
Run StarRocksFE
Use IDEA to open the fe directory.
If you execute the Main function directly in StarRocksFE.java, some errors will be reported. You only need to do some simple settings to run it smoothly.
NOTICE: StarRocksFE.java is in the fe/fe-core/src/main/java/com/starrocks directory.
- Copy the conf, bin and webroot directories from the StarRocks directory to
fedirectory:
cp -r conf fe/conf
cp -r bin fe/bin
cp -r webroot fe/webroot
- Enter the
fedirectory and create the log and meta folders under thefedirectory:
cd fe
mkdir log
mkdir meta
- Set the environment variable, as shown in the following figure:

export PID_DIR=/Users/smith/Code/starrocks/fe/bin
export STARROCKS_HOME=/Users/smith/Code/starrocks/fe
export LOG_DIR=/Users/smith/Code/starrocks/fe/log
Modify the priority_networks in
fe/conf/fe.confto127.0.0.1/24to prevent FE from using the current computer's LAN IP and cause the port fail to bind.Then you have run StarRocks FE successfully.
Coding style setting
To standardize the coding style, you should import the fe/starrocks_intellij_style.xml code style file in IDEA.
