This README is just a fast "quick start" document. You can find more detailed documentation at http://redis.io

It is as simple as:

% make

You can run a 32 bit Redis binary using:

% make 32bit

After building Redis is a good idea to test it, using:

% make test

NOTE: if after building Redis with a 32 bit target you need to rebuild it with a 64 bit target you need to perform a "make clean" in the root directory of the Redis distribution.

Selecting a non-default memory allocator when building Redis is done by setting the MALLOC environment variable. Redis is compiled and linked against libc malloc by default, with the exception of jemalloc being the default on Linux systems. This default was picked because jemalloc has proven to have fewer fragmentation problems than libc malloc.

To force compiling against libc malloc, use:

% make MALLOC=libc

To compile against jemalloc on Mac OS X systems, use:

% make MALLOC=jemalloc

Redis will build with a user friendly colorized output by default. If you want to see a more verbose output use the following:

% make V=1

To run Redis with the default configuration just type:

% cd src
% ./redis-server

If you want to provide your redis.conf, you have to run it using an additional parameter (the path of the configuration file):

% cd src
% ./redis-server /path/to/redis.conf

It is possible to alter the Redis configuration passing parameters directly as options using the command line. Examples:

% ./redis-server --port 9999 --slaveof 127.0.0.1 6379
% ./redis-server /etc/redis/6379.conf --loglevel debug

All the options in redis.conf are also supported as options using the command line, with exactly the same name.

You can use redis-cli to play with Redis. Start a redis-server instance, then in another terminal try the following:

% cd src
% ./redis-cli
redis> ping
PONG
redis> set foo bar
OK
redis> get foo
"bar"
redis> incr mycounter
(integer) 1
redis> incr mycounter
(integer) 2
redis> 

You can find the list of all the available commands here:

http://redis.io/commands

In order to install Redis binaries into /usr/local/bin just use:

% make install

You can use "make PREFIX=/some/other/directory install" if you wish to use a different destination.

Make install will just install binaries in your system, but will not configure init scripts and configuration files in the appropriate place. This is not needed if you want just to play a bit with Redis, but if you are installing it the proper way for a production system, we have a script doing this for Ubuntu and Debian systems:

% cd utils
% ./install_server

The script will ask you a few questions and will setup everything you need to run Redis properly as a background daemon that will start again on system reboots.

You'll be able to stop and start Redis using the script named /etc/init.d/redis_, for instance /etc/init.d/redis_6379.

Enjoy!