Apache NiFi Development Quickstart
Source Code
Apache NiFi source code is version controlled using Git version control (browse|checkout).
The code is also mirrored to Github
Issue Tracking
Track issues on the "NIFI" Project on the Apache Jira (browse).
Building
Checking out from Git
To check out the code:
git clone http://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator-nifi.git
Then checkout the 'develop' branch
git checkout develop
Build steps
- You need a recent Java 7 (or newer) JDK.
- You need Apache Maven 3.X.
- We've successfully used 3.2.5 and as far back as 3.0.5
- Ensure your MAVEN_OPTS provides sufficient memory. Some build steps are fairly memory intensive
- These settings have worked well
MAVEN_OPTS="-Xms1024m -Xmx3076m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m"
- These settings have worked well
- [OPTIONAL] Build the nifi nar maven plugin.
- In the root dir of the source tree cd to
nifi-nar-maven-plugin. - Run
mvn clean install
- In the root dir of the source tree cd to
- Build the main nifi code base.
- In the root dir of the source tree cd to
nifi - run
mvn -T C2.0 clean install - You can tweak the maven build settings as you like but the previous command will execute with 2 threads per core.
- In the root dir of the source tree cd to
Now you should have a fully functioning build off the latest code in the develop branch.
Running the application
WARNING
Without any configuration, the application will run on port 8080 and does not require any credentials to modify the flow. This means of running Apache NiFi should be used only for development/testing and in an environment where only connections from trusted computers and users can connect to port 8080. Using iptables to allow only localhost connections to 8080 is a good start, but on systems with multiple (potentially untrusted) users, also not a sufficient protection.
Decompress and launch
Running the above build will create a tar.gz (and zip) file in nifi/nifi-assembly/target. This tar.gz should
contain the full application. Decompressing the tar.gz should make a directory for you containing several other
directories. conf contains application configuration, bin contains scripts
for launching the application. On linux and OSX, NiFi can be run using bin/nifi.sh <command> where
<command> is one of:
- start: starts NiFi in the background
- stop: stops NiFi that is running in the background
- status: provides the current status of NiFi
- run: runs NiFi in the foreground and waits to receive a Ctrl-C, which then shuts down NiFi.
- install: (available in Linux only, not OSX): installs NiFi as a service that can then be controlled
via
service nifi start,service nifi stop,service nifi status.
For Windows users, there exist several scripts in the bin directory that are analogous to those above:
start-nifi.bat, stop-nifi.bat, nifi-status.bat, and run-nifi.bat.
The configuration that is to be used when launching NiFi, such as Java heap size, the user
to run as, which Java command to use, etc. are configurable via the conf/bootstrap.conf file.
The entire concept of how the application will integrate to a given OS and run as an enduring service is something we're working hard on and would appreciate ideas for. The user experience needs to be excellent.
With the default settings you can point a web browser at http://localhost:8080/nifi/
Logging is configured by default to log to ./logs/nifi-app.log. The following log message should indicate the web ui
is ready for use:
2014-12-09 00:42:03,540 INFO [main] org.apache.nifi.web.server.JettyServer NiFi has started. The UI is available at the following URLs:
