Install the C SDK: Compile and link your code

1. Make sure your application meets New Relic's compatibility and requirements for the C SDK.
2. Make sure you have a New Relic license key.

Follow the procedures to configure logging for both the C SDK and the daemon. For example:

if (!newrelic_configure_log("./c_sdk.log", NEWRELIC_LOG_INFO)) {
    printf("Error configuring logging.\n");
    return -1;
  }

Be prepared to provide a meaningful app name in your initial application configuration; for example:

newrelic_app_config_t* config;
/* ... */
config = newrelic_create_app_config("Your Application Name", "LICENSE_KEY_HERE");

You may give your application up to three different names, separated by ;. Giving your application multiple names allows you to aggregate metrics for multiple agents across an entire app or service; for example:

config = newrelic_create_app_config("YOUR_APP_NAME;APP_GROUP_1;ALL_APPS", "LICENSE_KEY_HERE");

With the application configured, you can create a new application to connect to the daemon.

newrelic_app_t* app;
/* ... */
if (!newrelic_init(NULL, 0)) {
  printf("Error connecting to daemon.\n");
  return -1;
}
/* Wait up to 10 seconds for the SDK to connect to the daemon */
app = newrelic_create_app(config, 10000);
newrelic_destroy_app_config(&config);

To finish instrumenting your code, refer to the example programs in the C SDK Examples documentation on GitHub. For more information about source code and features, see the C SDK's source documentation for libnewrelic.h on GitHub.

The C SDK's libnewrelic.a is a static library that is already linked with the libpcre and libpthread libraries. To avoid symbol collisions in this linking step, be sure to link against each of these libraries.

In addition, to take full advantage of error traces in APM's Error analytics page, link your application using GNU's -rdynamic linker flag. This will allow more meaningful information to appear in the stack trace for the error recording on a transaction using the C SDK's newrelic_notice_error API call.

For example:

gcc -o test_app test_app.c -L. -lnewrelic -lpcre -lm -pthread -rdynamic

1. Start the C SDK's daemon. For example:

   ./newrelic-daemon -f -logfile newrelic-daemon.log -loglevel debug

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2. Check the output in the c_sdk.log and newrelic-daemon.log files.

   The C SDK's architecture requires that the daemon must be invoked first before your instrumented application is invoked.

   Tip

   To see all of the available options for the C daemon: At the command line, type:

   ./newrelic-daemon --help

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