3 Some notes on how to build Bitcoin Core in Unix.
5 (for OpenBSD specific instructions, see [build-openbsd.md](build-openbsd.md))
9 Always use absolute paths to configure and compile bitcoin and the dependencies,
10 for example, when specifying the path of the dependency:
12 ../dist/configure --enable-cxx --disable-shared --with-pic --prefix=$BDB_PREFIX
14 Here BDB_PREFIX must be an absolute path - it is defined using $(pwd) which ensures
15 the usage of the absolute path.
24 make install # optional
27 This will build bitcoin-qt as well if the dependencies are met.
32 These dependencies are required:
34 Library | Purpose | Description
35 ------------|------------------|----------------------
36 libssl | Crypto | Random Number Generation, Elliptic Curve Cryptography
37 libboost | Utility | Library for threading, data structures, etc
38 libevent | Networking | OS independent asynchronous networking
40 Optional dependencies:
42 Library | Purpose | Description
43 ------------|------------------|----------------------
44 miniupnpc | UPnP Support | Firewall-jumping support
45 libdb4.8 | Berkeley DB | Wallet storage (only needed when wallet enabled)
46 qt | GUI | GUI toolkit (only needed when GUI enabled)
47 protobuf | Payments in GUI | Data interchange format used for payment protocol (only needed when GUI enabled)
48 libqrencode | QR codes in GUI | Optional for generating QR codes (only needed when GUI enabled)
49 univalue | Utility | JSON parsing and encoding (bundled version will be used unless --with-system-univalue passed to configure)
50 libzmq3 | ZMQ notification | Optional, allows generating ZMQ notifications (requires ZMQ version >= 4.x)
52 For the versions used, see [dependencies.md](dependencies.md)
57 C++ compilers are memory-hungry. It is recommended to have at least 1.5 GB of
58 memory available when compiling Bitcoin Core. On systems with less, gcc can be
59 tuned to conserve memory with additional CXXFLAGS:
62 ./configure CXXFLAGS="--param ggc-min-expand=1 --param ggc-min-heapsize=32768"
64 Dependency Build Instructions: Ubuntu & Debian
65 ----------------------------------------------
68 sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autotools-dev automake pkg-config libssl-dev libevent-dev bsdmainutils python3
70 Options when installing required Boost library files:
72 1. On at least Ubuntu 14.04+ and Debian 7+ there are generic names for the
73 individual boost development packages, so the following can be used to only
74 install necessary parts of boost:
76 sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-thread-dev
78 2. If that doesn't work, you can install all boost development packages with:
80 sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev
82 BerkeleyDB is required for the wallet.
84 **For Ubuntu only:** db4.8 packages are available [here](https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin).
85 You can add the repository and install using the following commands:
87 sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
88 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
90 sudo apt-get install libdb4.8-dev libdb4.8++-dev
92 Ubuntu and Debian have their own libdb-dev and libdb++-dev packages, but these will install
93 BerkeleyDB 5.1 or later, which break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables which
94 are based on BerkeleyDB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility,
95 pass `--with-incompatible-bdb` to configure.
97 See the section "Disable-wallet mode" to build Bitcoin Core without wallet.
99 Optional (see --with-miniupnpc and --enable-upnp-default):
101 sudo apt-get install libminiupnpc-dev
103 ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API 4.x):
105 sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev
107 Dependencies for the GUI: Ubuntu & Debian
108 -----------------------------------------
110 If you want to build Bitcoin-Qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development
111 are installed. Either Qt 5 or Qt 4 are necessary to build the GUI.
112 If both Qt 4 and Qt 5 are installed, Qt 5 will be used. Pass `--with-gui=qt4` to configure to choose Qt4.
113 To build without GUI pass `--without-gui`.
115 To build with Qt 5 (recommended) you need the following:
117 sudo apt-get install libqt5gui5 libqt5core5a libqt5dbus5 qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
119 Alternatively, to build with Qt 4 you need the following:
121 sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
123 libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:
125 sudo apt-get install libqrencode-dev
127 Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a bitcoin-qt executable will be
130 Dependency Build Instructions: Fedora
131 -------------------------------------
134 sudo dnf install gcc-c++ libtool make autoconf automake openssl-devel libevent-devel boost-devel libdb4-devel libdb4-cxx-devel python3
138 sudo dnf install miniupnpc-devel
140 To build with Qt 5 (recommended) you need the following:
142 sudo dnf install qt5-qttools-devel qt5-qtbase-devel protobuf-devel
144 libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:
146 sudo dnf install qrencode-devel
150 The release is built with GCC and then "strip bitcoind" to strip the debug
151 symbols, which reduces the executable size by about 90%.
157 [miniupnpc](http://miniupnp.free.fr/) may be used for UPnP port mapping. It can be downloaded from [here](
158 http://miniupnp.tuxfamily.org/files/). UPnP support is compiled in and
159 turned off by default. See the configure options for upnp behavior desired:
161 --without-miniupnpc No UPnP support miniupnp not required
162 --disable-upnp-default (the default) UPnP support turned off by default at runtime
163 --enable-upnp-default UPnP support turned on by default at runtime
168 It is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. If you have to build it yourself:
173 # Pick some path to install BDB to, here we create a directory within the bitcoin directory
174 BDB_PREFIX="${BITCOIN_ROOT}/db4"
177 # Fetch the source and verify that it is not tampered with
178 wget 'http://download.oracle.com/berkeley-db/db-4.8.30.NC.tar.gz'
179 echo '12edc0df75bf9abd7f82f821795bcee50f42cb2e5f76a6a281b85732798364ef db-4.8.30.NC.tar.gz' | sha256sum -c
180 # -> db-4.8.30.NC.tar.gz: OK
181 tar -xzvf db-4.8.30.NC.tar.gz
183 # Build the library and install to our prefix
184 cd db-4.8.30.NC/build_unix/
185 # Note: Do a static build so that it can be embedded into the executable, instead of having to find a .so at runtime
186 ../dist/configure --enable-cxx --disable-shared --with-pic --prefix=$BDB_PREFIX
189 # Configure Bitcoin Core to use our own-built instance of BDB
192 ./configure LDFLAGS="-L${BDB_PREFIX}/lib/" CPPFLAGS="-I${BDB_PREFIX}/include/" # (other args...)
195 **Note**: You only need Berkeley DB if the wallet is enabled (see the section *Disable-Wallet mode* below).
199 If you need to build Boost yourself:
208 To help make your bitcoin installation more secure by making certain attacks impossible to
209 exploit even if a vulnerability is found, binaries are hardened by default.
210 This can be disabled with:
214 ./configure --enable-hardening
215 ./configure --disable-hardening
218 Hardening enables the following features:
220 * Position Independent Executable
221 Build position independent code to take advantage of Address Space Layout Randomization
222 offered by some kernels. Attackers who can cause execution of code at an arbitrary memory
223 location are thwarted if they don't know where anything useful is located.
224 The stack and heap are randomly located by default but this allows the code section to be
225 randomly located as well.
227 On an AMD64 processor where a library was not compiled with -fPIC, this will cause an error
228 such as: "relocation R_X86_64_32 against `......' can not be used when making a shared object;"
230 To test that you have built PIE executable, install scanelf, part of paxutils, and use:
234 The output should contain:
239 * Non-executable Stack
240 If the stack is executable then trivial stack based buffer overflow exploits are possible if
241 vulnerable buffers are found. By default, bitcoin should be built with a non-executable stack
242 but if one of the libraries it uses asks for an executable stack or someone makes a mistake
243 and uses a compiler extension which requires an executable stack, it will silently build an
244 executable without the non-executable stack protection.
246 To verify that the stack is non-executable after compiling use:
247 `scanelf -e ./bitcoin`
249 the output should contain:
253 The STK RW- means that the stack is readable and writeable but not executable.
257 When the intention is to run only a P2P node without a wallet, bitcoin may be compiled in
258 disable-wallet mode with:
260 ./configure --disable-wallet
262 In this case there is no dependency on Berkeley DB 4.8.
264 Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode, but only using the `getblocktemplate` RPC
267 Additional Configure Flags
268 --------------------------
269 A list of additional configure flags can be displayed with:
274 Setup and Build Example: Arch Linux
275 -----------------------------------
276 This example lists the steps necessary to setup and build a command line only, non-wallet distribution of the latest changes on Arch Linux:
278 pacman -S git base-devel boost libevent python
279 git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
282 ./configure --disable-wallet --without-gui --without-miniupnpc
286 Enabling wallet support requires either compiling against a Berkeley DB newer than 4.8 (package `db`) using `--with-incompatible-bdb`,
287 or building and depending on a local version of Berkeley DB 4.8. The readily available Arch Linux packages are currently built using
288 `--with-incompatible-bdb` according to the [PKGBUILD](https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/bitcoin/trunk/PKGBUILD).
289 As mentioned above, when maintaining portability of the wallet between the standard Bitcoin Core distributions and independently built
290 node software is desired, Berkeley DB 4.8 must be used.
293 ARM Cross-compilation
295 These steps can be performed on, for example, an Ubuntu VM. The depends system
296 will also work on other Linux distributions, however the commands for
297 installing the toolchain will be different.
299 Make sure you install the build requirements mentioned above.
300 Then, install the toolchain and curl:
302 sudo apt-get install g++-arm-linux-gnueabihf curl
304 To build executables for ARM:
307 make HOST=arm-linux-gnueabihf NO_QT=1
309 ./configure --prefix=$PWD/depends/arm-linux-gnueabihf --enable-glibc-back-compat --enable-reduce-exports LDFLAGS=-static-libstdc++
313 For further documentation on the depends system see [README.md](../depends/README.md) in the depends directory.
318 (Updated as of FreeBSD 11.0)
320 Clang is installed by default as `cc` compiler, this makes it easier to get
321 started than on [OpenBSD](build-openbsd.md). Installing dependencies:
323 pkg install autoconf automake libtool pkgconf
324 pkg install boost-libs openssl libevent
327 You need to use GNU make (`gmake`) instead of `make`.
328 (`libressl` instead of `openssl` will also work)
330 For the wallet (optional):
334 This will give a warning "configure: WARNING: Found Berkeley DB other
335 than 4.8; wallets opened by this build will not be portable!", but as FreeBSD never
336 had a binary release, this may not matter. If backwards compatibility
337 with 4.8-built Bitcoin Core is needed follow the steps under "Berkeley DB" above.
342 ./configure --with-incompatible-bdb BDB_CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/db5" BDB_LIBS="-L/usr/local/lib -ldb_cxx-5"
345 *Note on debugging*: The version of `gdb` installed by default is [ancient and considered harmful](https://wiki.freebsd.org/GdbRetirement).
346 It is not suitable for debugging a multi-threaded C++ program, not even for getting backtraces. Please install the package `gdb` and
347 use the versioned gdb command e.g. `gdb7111`.