This directory has the thrift server code that exposes leveldb apis. The thrift api is specified in thrift/if/leveldb.thrift. The thrift header files are in ./thrift/lib. These are part of Apache Thrift code base and are needed for compilation of the leveldb thrift server. The thrift libraries are copied into ./thrift/libs. If you want to use a different version of thrift, please update these directories with the corresponding thrift header files and the compiled thrift libraries. If you want to compile leveldb with thrift-server support, please set the following enviroment variables appropriately: USE_THRIFT=1 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:./thrift/libs make clean leveldb_server leveldb_server_test You can run the leveldb server unit tests by ./leveldb_server_test You can regenerate the thrift cpp files by doing the following cd ./thrift thrift --gen cpp if/leveldb.thrift