Reclient

Reclient speaks the Remote Execution API through a local daemon, reproxy, and command wrapper, rewrapper. NativeLink can be the backend for Reclient clients such as Chromium and other GN/Ninja builds.

For a production Chromium walkthrough, see Deployment → Chromium.

Local cache-only setup

Start NativeLink on localhost:50051 with instance name main, then export the environment variables Reclient reads:

export RBE_service=localhost:50051
export RBE_instance=main
export RBE_service_no_security=true

For cache-only compiler wrapping, run reproxy and invoke a command with rewrapper:

reproxy &
rewrapper -- clang++ -c hello.cc -o hello.o

For CMake projects, recc is often the smaller setup. It uses the same Remote Execution API but fits CMake compiler-launcher workflows directly.

Chromium-style setup

Chromium checks in Reclient configs. Point them at NativeLink by enabling remote execution in GN:

gn gen out/Default --args='
  use_remoteexec=true
  use_goma=false
  use_siso=false
  reclient_cfg_dir="../../buildtools/reclient_cfgs/chromium-browser-clang"
'

Start the daemon before building:

buildtools/reclient/bootstrap --re_proxy=buildtools/reclient/reproxy
autoninja -C out/Default chrome

Production TLS settings

For a secured NativeLink endpoint, set the Reclient TLS variables instead of RBE_service_no_security=true:

export RBE_service=cas.nativelink.internal:50051
export RBE_instance=main
export RBE_service_no_security=false
export RBE_tls_client_auth_cert=/etc/nativelink/tls/client.crt
export RBE_tls_client_auth_key=/etc/nativelink/tls/client.key
export RBE_tls_ca_cert=/etc/nativelink/tls/ca.crt

Confirm it is working

Use Reclient stats after a build:

reclient stats

On a warm cache, cache hits should climb and network errors should stay at zero. If actions fall back to local execution, compare the platform properties Reclient requests with the properties your NativeLink workers advertise.