Sysdig fails to build with grpc 1.41

[mtorromeo]

As per the title, I am having some trouble building sysdig against grpc 1.41.0 on Arch.

The build fails at the linking phase with the following error:

/usr/bin/ld: ../libsinsp/libsinsp.a(cri.grpc.pb.cc.o): undefined reference to symbol '_ZN4absl12lts_202103245MutexD1Ev'
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/libabsl_synchronization.so.2103.0.1: error adding symbols: DSO missing from command line
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

It is my understanding that the problem is due to ABI incompatibility between grpc and abseil-cpp being built using c++17 while sysdig uses c++0x.

This has been a potential problem for a while, but it happened to work just fine with grpc up to version 1.39.0.

I tried building sysdig with c++17 as well, patching the cmake files where necessary, but it fails with a different type of error with the code generated by protobuf, I think. I don't have the log handy at the moment, but I can try it again and paste it here later if you need it.

Thanks

[hhoffstaette]

The problem is not the C++ standard (it reprouces when building everything with c++17) but that code that links against grpc-1.41 also needs to link a new dependency required by grpc itself (libabsl_synchronization) so it could be a bug in grpc, though it looks more like something missing in libsinsp's grpc support.
Just now I added -labsl_synchronization to the LINK_LIBRARIES in my generated Ninja build file (after the grpc libs), restarted the build and it linked correctly. The binary works too. :)
I'll see if I can figure out the best way to add this, though I'm working on making 0.27.1 work (on Gentoo) instead of git master, which is very different.

[hhoffstaette]

I'm not sure how useful this is for current master, but the patch here makes 0.27.1 build/link/work against grpc-1.41 for me on Gentoo (without any bundled deps), even with all of abseil-cpp/grpc/sysdig built with LTO. :)

[mtorromeo]

@hhoffstaette thanks for the patch, but it doesn't seem like that's the same issue.

As you can see in the log of my error, the absl_synchronization lib is already being linked. In fact I did try the patch anyway and it still didn't compile with the same error.

[mtorromeo]

Nevermind, it works. I was looking at the wrong log.

Thanks again!

[krop]

I'm not sure how useful this is for current master, but the patch here makes 0.27.1 build/link/work against grpc-1.41 for me on Gentoo (without any bundled deps), even with all of abseil-cpp/grpc/sysdig built with LTO. :)

I'm looking at the same failure for openSUSE. The link call needs to be in a block that first checks if the library was found, or it will cause errors when building with older grpc.
i.e.:

if(ABSL_SYNC_LIB)
  target_link_libraries(sinsp "${ABSL_SYNC_LIB}")
endif()

When sysdig updates the minimum CMake version, this could be converted to a generator expression.

The build still fails but not because of this issue anymore :)

[FedeDP]

@mtorromeo I opened a PR to fix build using system grpc: falcosecurity/libs#144.
Tested on arch myself.

Hopefully it will get merged soon :)

[FedeDP]

The PR on libs is now merged; Sysdig still points to an older one though.

[FedeDP]

Sysdig 0.28 should built with system grpc! @mtorromeo any feedback?
As far as i can see, you are already building against system grpc: https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/sysdig/.
Can we close this one?

[mtorromeo]

@FedeDP yes, it works fine now. Thanks