ladybird/Documentation/BuildInstructions.md

SerenityOS build instructions

Prerequisites

Linux prerequisites

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed:

Debian / Ubuntu

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

Fedora

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

openSUSE

sudo zypper install curl cmake mpfr-devel mpc-devel gmp-devel e2fsprogs patch qemu-x86 qemu-audio-pa gcc gcc-c++ patterns-devel-C-C++-devel_C_C++

Arch Linux / Manjaro

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

ALT Linux

apt-get install curl cmake libmpc-devel gmp-devel e2fsprogs libmpfr-devel patch gcc

Ensure your gcc version is >= 10 with gcc --version. Otherwise, install it.

On Ubuntu it's in the repositories of 20.04 (Focal) and later - add the ubuntu-toolchain-r/test PPA if you're running an older version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

On Debian you can use the Debian testing branch:

sudo echo "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ testing non-free contrib main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update

Now on Ubuntu or Debian you can install gcc-10 with apt like this:

sudo apt install gcc-10 g++-10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-10 900 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-10

If you don't want to stay on the testing branch you can switch back by running:

sudo sed -i '$d' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update

Ensure your CMake version is >= 3.16 with cmake --version. If your system doesn't provide a suitable version of CMake, you can download a binary release from the CMake website.

macOS prerequisites

Make sure you have all the dependencies installed:

brew install coreutils qemu e2fsprogs m4 autoconf libtool automake bash gcc@10
brew install --cask 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
• 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.
• bash is needed because the default version installed on macOS doesn't support globstar
• 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.
• As of 2020-08-06, you might need to tell the build system about your newer host compiler. Once you've built the toolchain, navigate to Build/, rm -rf *, then run cmake .. -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-10 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-10, then continue with make install as usual.

OpenBSD prerequisites

pkg_add bash gmp gcc git gmake sudo

FreeBSD prerequisites

$ pkg add coreutils gmake bash sudo git

Windows

For Windows, you will require Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2). Follow the WSL2 instructions here. Do note the Hardware acceleration and Note on filesystems sections, otherwise performance will be terrible. Once you have installed a distro for WSL2, follow the Linux prerequisites above for the distro you installed, then continue as normal.

Build

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

$ cd Toolchain
$ ./BuildIt.sh

Building the toolchain will also automatically create a Build/ directory for the build to live in, and build cmake inside that directory.

Once the toolchain and cmake have been built, go into the Build/ directory and run the make and make install commands:

$ cd ..
$ cd Build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ make install

This will compile all of SerenityOS and install the built files into Root/ inside the build tree. make install actually pulls in the regular make (make all) automatically, so there isn't really a need to run it explicitly. You may also want ask make to build things in parallel by using -j, optionally specifying the maximum number of jobs to run.

Now to build a disk image, run make image, and if nothing breaks too much, take it for a spin by using make run.

$ make image
$ make 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.

Outside of QEMU, Serenity will run on VirtualBox. If you're curious, see how to install Serenity on VirtualBox.

Later on, when you git pull to get the latest changes, there's no need to rebuild the toolchain. You can simply run make install, make image, make run again. CMake will only rebuild those parts that have been updated.

Faster than make: "Ninja"

You may also want to replace make with ninja in the above commands for some additional build speed benefits, like reduced double-building of headers. Most of the process stays the same:

• Go to an empty directory at the root (e.g. Build/) and call cmake .. -G Ninja inside that directory
• You might either create a new directory or reuse the existing Build directory after cleaning it.
• make becomes ninja
• make install becomes ninja install
• make image becomes ninja image
• make run becomes ninja run

Note that ninja automatically chooses a sane value for -j automatically, and if something goes wrong it will print the full compiler invocation. Otherwise, ninja behaves just like make. (And is a tad faster.)

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 make image from the Build/ directory to update the disk image. The next time you start Serenity with make run, curl will be available.