Elixir is a source code cross-referencer inspired by LXR. It's written in Python and its main purpose is to index every release of a C or C++ project (like the Linux kernel) while keeping a minimal footprint.

It uses Git as a source-code file store and Berkeley DB for cross-reference data. Internally, it indexes Git blobs rather than trees of files to avoid duplicating work and data. It has a straightforward data structure (reminiscent of older LXR releases) to keep queries simple and fast.

You can see it in action on https://elixir.bootlin.com/

• Python >= 3.5
• The Jinja2 and Pygments Python libraries
• Berkeley DB (and its Python binding)
• Exuberant Ctags
• Perl (for non-greedy regexes)

Elixir has the following architecture:

.---------------.
| CGI interface |
|---------------|----------------.
| Query command | Update command |
|---------------|----------------|
|          Shell script          |
'--------------------------------'

The shell script (script.sh) is the lower layer and provides commands to interact with Git and other Unix utilities. The Python commands use the shell script's services to provide access to the annotated source code and identifier lists (query.py) or to create and update the databases (update.py). Finally, the CGI interface (web.py) uses the query interface to generate HTML pages.

When installing the system, you should test each layer manually and make sure it works correctly before moving on to the next one.

For RedHat/CentOS

yum install python36-jinja2 python36-pygments python36-bsddb3 global-ctags git httpd

For Debian

sudo apt install python3 python3-jinja2 python3-pygments python3-bsddb3 exuberant-ctags perl git apache2

To know which packages to install, you can also read the Docker files in the docker/ directory to know what packages Elixir needs in your favorite distribution.

git clone https://github.com/bootlin/elixir.git /usr/local/elixir/

mkdir -p /path/elixir-data/linux/repo
mkdir -p /path/elixir-data/linux/data

Two environment variables are used to tell Elixir where to find its local Git repository and its database directory:

• LXR_REPO_DIR (the directory that contains your Git project)
• LXR_DATA_DIR (the directory that will contain your databases)

Now open /etc/profile and append the following content.

export LXR_REPO_DIR=/path/elixir-data/linux/repo
export LXR_DATA_DIR=/path/elixir-data/linux/data

And then run source /etc/profile.

git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git /path/elixir-data/linux/repo/

cd /usr/local/elixir/
./script.sh list-tags

./update.py

Generating the full database can take a long time: it takes about 15 hours on a Xeon E3-1245 v5 to index 1800 tags in the Linux kernel. For that reason, you may want to tweak the script (for example, by limiting the number of tags with a "head") in order to test the update and query commands. You can even create a new Git repository and just create one tag instead of using the official kernel repository which is very large.

Verify that the queries work:

$ ./query.py file v4.10 /kernel/sched/clock.c
$ ./query.py ident v4.10 raw_spin_unlock_irq

Note: v4.10 can be replaced with any other tag.

The CGI interface (web.py) is meant to be called from your web server. Since it includes support for indexing multiple projects, it expects a different variable (LXR_PROJ_DIR) which points to a directory with a specific structure:

• <LXR_PROJ_DIR>
  • <project 1>
    • data
    • repo
  • <project 2>
    • data
    • repo
  • <project 3>
    • data
    • repo

It will then generate the other two variables upon calling the query command.

Now open /etc/httpd/conf.d/elixir.conf and write the following content.

HttpProtocolOptions Unsafe
<Directory /usr/local/elixir/http/>
    Options +ExecCGI
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
    SetEnv PYTHONIOENCODING utf-8
    SetEnv LXR_PROJ_DIR /path/elixir-data
</Directory>

AddHandler cgi-script .py
#Listen 80
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName xxx
    DocumentRoot /usr/local/elixir/http
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule "^/$" "/linux/latest/source" [R]
    RewriteRule "^/.*/(source|ident|search)" "/web.py" [PT]
</VirtualHost>

cgi and rewrite support has been enabled by default in RHEL/CentOS, but you should enable it manually if your distribution is Debian/Ubuntu.

a2enmod cgi rewrite

Finally, start the httpd server.

systemctl start httpd

Docker files are provided in the docker/ directory. To generate your own Docker image for indexing the sources of a project (for example for the Musl project which is much faster to index that Linux), download the Dockerfile file for your target distribution and run:

$ docker build -t elixir --build-arg GIT_REPO_URL=git://git.musl-libc.org/musl --build-arg PROJECT=musl .

Then you can use your new container as follows (you get the container id from the output of docker build):

$ docker run <container-id>

You can the open the below URL in a browser on your host: http://172.17.0.2/musl/latest/source (change the container IP address if you don't get the default one)

./update.py stores a bidirectionnal mapping between git object hashes ("blobs") and a sequential key. The goal of indexing such hashes is to reduce their storage footprint (20 bytes for a SHA-1 hash versus 4 bytes for a 32 bit integer).

A detailed diagram of the databases will be provided. Until then, just use the Source, Luke.

Performance requirements depend mostly on the amount of traffic that you get on your Elixir service. However, a fast server also helps for the initial indexing of the projects.

SSD storage is strongly recommended because of the frequent access to git repositories.

At Bootlin, here are a few details about the server we're using:

• As of July 2019, our Elixir service consumes 17 GB of data (supporting all projects), or for the Linux kernel alone (version 5.2 being the latest), 12 GB for indexing data, and 2 GB for the git repository.
• We're using an LXD instance with 8 GB of RAM on a cloud server with 8 CPU cores running at 3.1 GHz.

Elixir has a very simple modular architecture that allows to support new source code projects by just adding a new file to the Elixir sources.

Elixir's assumptions:

• Project sources have to be available in a git repository
• All project releases are associated to a given git tag. Elixir only considers such tags.

First make an installation of Elixir by following the above instructions. See the projects subdirectory for projects that are already supported.

Once Elixir works for at least one project, it's time to clone the git repository for the project you want to support:

cd /srv/git
git clone --bare https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr

Now, in your LXR_PROJ_DIR directory, create a new directory for the new project:

cd $LXR_PROJ_DIR
mkdir -p zephyr/data
ln -s /srv/git/zephyr.git repo
export LXR_DATA_DIR=$LXR_PROJ_DIR/data
export LXR_REPO_DIR=$LXR_PROJ_DIR/repo

Now, go back to the Elixir sources and test that tags are correctly extracted:

./script.sh list-tags

Depending on how you want to show the available versions on the Elixir pages, you may have to apply substitutions to each tag string, for example to add a v prefix if missing, for consistency with how other project versions are shown. You may also decide to ignore specific tags. All this can be done by redefining the default list_tags() function in a new project/<projectname>.sh file. Here's an example (projects/zephyr.sh file):

list_tags()
{
    echo "$tags" |
    grep -v '^zephyr-v'
}

Note that <project_name> must match the name of the directory that you created under LXR_PROJ_DIR.

The next step is to make sure that versions are classified as you wish in the version menu. This classification work is done through the list_tags_h() function which generates the output of the ./scripts.sh list-tags -h command. Here's what you get for the Linux project:

v4 v4.16 v4.16
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc7
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc6
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc5
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc4
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc3
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc2
v4 v4.16 v4.16-rc1
...

The first column is the top level menu entry for versions. The second one is the next level menu entry, and the third one is the actual version that can be selected by the menu. Note that this third entry must correspond to the exact name of the tag in git.

If the default behavior is not what you want, you will have to customize the list_tags_h function.

You should also make sure that Elixir properly identifies the most recent versions:

./script.sh get-latest

If needed, customize the get_latest() function.

You are now ready to generate Elixir's database for your new project:

./update.py

You can then check that Elixir works through your http server.

Note: this documentation applies to version 0.3 of Elixir.