Build and run Redis Open Source on Alpine 3.23+

Redis Open Source

Follow the steps below to build and run Redis Open Source with all data structures from its source code on a system running Alpine 3.23 or later.

Note:

Docker image used to produce these build notes:

alpine:3.23

The steps below assume you are running as root, as in the tested container image.

1. Install required dependencies

Update your package lists and install the necessary development tools and libraries:

apk update
apk add --no-cache \
    build-base coreutils linux-headers bsd-compat-headers \
    openssl openssl-dev cmake bash git wget curl xz unzip tar rsync which \
    libtool automake autoconf libffi-dev libgcc ncurses-dev xsimd \
    cargo clang21 clang21-static clang21-libclang llvm21-dev lld21 \
    python3 py3-pip python3-dev

Install the Python packages required by the RedisJSON module build:

export PIP_BREAK_SYSTEM_PACKAGES=1
pip install --upgrade setuptools pip
pip install addict toml jinja2 ramp-packer

2. Download and extract the Redis source

The Redis source code is available from the Redis GitHub site. Select the release you want to build and then select the .tar.gz file from the Assets drop down menu. You can verify the integrity of these downloads by checking them against the digests in the redis-hashes GitHub repository.

Copy the tar(1) file to /usr/src.

Alternatively, you can download the file directly using the wget command, as shown below.

mkdir -p /usr/src
cd /usr/src
wget -O redis-<version>.tar.gz https://github.com/redis/redis/archive/refs/tags/<version>.tar.gz

Replace <version> with the three-digit Redis release number, for example 8.0.0.

Extract the source:

cd /usr/src
tar xvf redis-<version>.tar.gz
rm redis-<version>.tar.gz

3. Build Redis

Set the necessary environment variables, apply the RedisJSON Rust-flags patch, and build Redis with TLS and module support:

cd /usr/src/redis-<version>

export BUILD_TLS=yes
export BUILD_WITH_MODULES=yes
export INSTALL_RUST_TOOLCHAIN=yes
export LTO=1
export RUST_DYN_CRT=1
export PATH="/usr/lib/llvm21/bin:$PATH"

# RedisJSON's bindgen must dlopen libclang.so; drop crt-static from its Rust flags.
make -C modules/redisjson get_source
sed -i 's/^RUST_FLAGS=$/RUST_FLAGS += -C target-feature=-crt-static/' modules/redisjson/src/Makefile

make -j "$(nproc)" all

4. (Optional) Verify the build

Check the built Redis server and CLI versions:

cd /usr/src/redis-<version>
./src/redis-server --version
./src/redis-cli --version

5. Start Redis

To start Redis, use the following command:

cd /usr/src/redis-<version>
./src/redis-server redis-full.conf

To validate that the available modules have been installed, run the INFO command and look for lines similar to the following:

cd /usr/src/redis-<version>
./src/redis-cli INFO
...
# Modules
module:name=ReJSON,ver=20803,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[search],using=[],options=[handle-io-errors]
module:name=search,ver=21005,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[],using=[ReJSON],options=[handle-io-errors]
module:name=bf,ver=20802,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[],using=[],options=[]
module:name=timeseries,ver=11202,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[],using=[],options=[handle-io-errors]
module:name=RedisCompat,ver=1,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[],using=[],options=[]
module:name=vectorset,ver=1,api=1,filters=0,usedby=[],using=[],options=[]
...

6. (Optional) Install Redis to its default location

cd /usr/src/redis-<version>
make install