ladybird/Documentation/BuildInstructions.md

SerenityOS build instructions

Linux prerequisites

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed:

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential curl libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev libgmp-dev e2fsprogs qemu-system-i386 qemu-utils

On Docker, install these as well:

sudo apt install wget genext2fs

Fedora

sudo dnf install curl mpfr-devel libmpc-devel gmp-devel e2fsprogs @"C Development Tools and Libraries" @Virtualization

Arch Linux / Manjaro

sudo pacman -S base-devel curl mpfr libmpc gmp e2fsprogs qemu qemu-arch-extra

Ensure your gcc version is >= 8 with gcc --version. Otherwise, install it (on Ubuntu) with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get install gcc-9 g++-9
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-9 900 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-9

macOS prerequisites

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed:

brew install coreutils
brew tap discoteq/discoteq
brew install flock
brew install qemu
brew install wget
brew install e2fsprogs
brew install m4
brew install autoconf
brew install libtool
brew install automake
brew cask install osxfuse
Toolchain/BuildFuseExt2.sh

Notes:

• fuse-ext2 is not available as brew formula so it must be installed using BuildFuseExt2.sh
• Xcode and xcode-tools must be installed (git is required by some scripts)
• coreutils is needed to build gcc cross compiler
• flock command can also be installed with brew install util-linux but in that case you will need to add it to $PATH
• qemu is needed to run the compiled OS image. You can also build it using the BuildQemu.sh script
• osxfuse, e2fsprogs, m4, autoconf, automake, libtool and BuildFuseExt2.sh are needed if you want to build the root filesystem disk image natively on macOS. This allows mounting an EXT2 fs and also installs commands like mke2fs that are not available on stock macOS.
• If you install some commercial EXT2 macOS fs handler instead of osxfuse and fuse-ext2, you will need to brew install e2fsprogs to obtain mke2fs anyway.

OpenBSD prerequisites

pkg_add bash gmp gcc git flock gmake sudo

When building with make, gmake must be used. The makeall.sh script will do this automatically when building on OpenBSD.

Build

Before starting, make sure that you have configured your global identity for git, or the first script will fail after running for a bit.

Go into the Toolchain/ directory and run the BuildIt.sh script.

Once you've built the toolchain, go into the Kernel/ directory, then run ./makeall.sh, and if nothing breaks too much, take it for a spin by using ./run.

Note that the anon user is able to become root without password by default, as a development convenience. To prevent this, remove anon from the wheel group and he will no longer be able to run /bin/su.

On Linux, QEMU is significantly faster if it's able to use KVM. The run script will automatically enable KVM if /dev/kvm exists and is readable+writable by the current user.

Bare curious users may even consider sourcing suitable hardware to install Serenity on a physical PC.

Later on, when you git pull to get the latest changes, there's no need to rebuild the toolchain. You can simply rerun ./makeall.sh in the Kernel/ directory and you'll be good to ./run again.

You can even re-compile only parts of the system. Imagine you changed something in the WindowServer. Then run make -C ../Services/WindowServer (from the Kernel/ directory) followed by ./sync.sh to update the disk image. Then you can start the system with ./run again.

Ports

To add a package from the ports collection to Serenity, for example curl, go into Ports/curl/ and run ./package.sh. The sourcecode for the package will be downloaded and the package will be built. After that, run ./sync.sh from the Kernel/ directory to update the disk image. The next time you start Serenity with ./run, curl will be available.