Development

The development guide is CLAUDE.md in the repository. It covers the model, conventions, and what every spec added. This page covers building and testing.

Build

git submodule update --init --recursive
GEN=ninja make                          # release build of duckdb + the extension
ACL_INTEGRATION=1 ACL_QUACK=1 GEN=ninja make   # also the scanners and quack, for the integration and door tests

The loadable extension is build/release/extension/acl/acl.duckdb_extension, and the CLI with acl built in is build/release/duckdb. The scanners come from vcpkg; run make vcpkg-setup once.

Test

build/release/test/unittest 'test/sql/*'   # the sqllogictest suite, what CI runs
GEN=ninja make test-cpp                    # standalone C++ invariant tests (test/cpp/)
test/harness/run.sh                        # the end-to-end demo
make test-flight                           # the Flight SQL door against real drivers
make test-e2e                              # the doors end to end
make docker-up && make test-integration    # against Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, DuckLake

The policy schema is written once, in schema/policy_schema.sql. make schema renders everything from it, and make schema-check fails if a rendered file is stale, or if a catalog migrated from the previous version differs from a fresh one.

Specs

Each feature gets one short spec under specs/, before or alongside the code. A spec covers the problem, the design, enforcement and security, tests and alternatives. It is set to implemented when the feature lands, and superseded rather than rewritten when a decision changes.

These docs

The site is built from website/ with Docusaurus:

cd website && npm ci && npx docusaurus start   # live preview
npx docusaurus build                           # what the PR check runs (broken links fail it)

A link from one page to another is relative (serving.md#the-quack-door), never an absolute site path. scripts/ci/check_docs_links.py enforces that.