This document will help you to build the Knowhere repository from source code and to run unit tests. Please file an issue if there's a problem.

Knowhere is written in C++. It is an independent project that act as Milvus's internal core.

If you wish to only use Knowhere within Milvus without changing any of the Knowhere source code, we suggest that you move to the Milvus main project and build Milvus directly, where Knowhere is then built implicitly during Milvus build.

All Linux distributions are available for Knowhere development. However, a majority of our contributor worked with Ubuntu or CentOS systems, with a small portion of Mac (both x86_64 and Apple Silicon) contributors. If you would like Knowhere to build and run on other distributions, you are more than welcome to file an issue and contribute!

Here's a list of verified OS types where Knowhere can successfully build and run:

• Ubuntu 18.04
• CentOS 7
• MacOS (x86_64)
• MacOS (Apple Silicon)
• MinGW64

$ ./scripts/install_deps.sh

$ ./build.sh -t Release

$ ./build.sh -t Release -u && output/unittest/test_knowhere

$ ./build.sh -r

install dependency:

sudo apt install swig python3-dev

after build knowhere:

cd python
python3 setup.py bdist_wheel

install knowhere wheel:

pip3 install dist/knowhere-1.0.0-cp38-cp38-linux_x86_64.whl

clean

cd python
rm -rf build
rm -rf dist
rm -rf knowhere.egg-info
rm knowhere/knowhere_wrap.cpp
rm knowhere/swigknowhere.py