Some notes on how to build Bitcoin Core in Unix.

(For BSD specific instructions, see build-*bsd.md in this directory.)

./autogen.sh
./configure
make # use "-j N" for N parallel jobs
make install # optional

See below for instructions on how to install the dependencies on popular Linux distributions, or the dependencies section for a complete overview.

C++ compilers are memory-hungry. It is recommended to have at least 1.5 GB of memory available when compiling Bitcoin Core. On systems with less, gcc can be tuned to conserve memory with additional CXXFLAGS:

./configure CXXFLAGS="--param ggc-min-expand=1 --param ggc-min-heapsize=32768"

Alternatively, or in addition, debugging information can be skipped for compilation. The default compile flags are -g -O2, and can be changed with:

./configure CXXFLAGS="-g0"

Finally, clang (often less resource hungry) can be used instead of gcc, which is used by default:

./configure CXX=clang++ CC=clang

Build requirements:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool autotools-dev automake pkg-config bsdmainutils python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libevent-dev libboost-dev

SQLite is required for the descriptor wallet:

sudo apt install libsqlite3-dev

Berkeley DB is only required for the legacy wallet. Ubuntu and Debian have their own libdb-dev and libdb++-dev packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.3 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on BerkeleyDB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure. Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

To build Bitcoin Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc and --with-natpmp):

sudo apt install libminiupnpc-dev libnatpmp-dev

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev

User-Space, Statically Defined Tracing (USDT) dependencies:

sudo apt install systemtap-sdt-dev

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build bitcoin-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo apt install qtwayland5

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo apt-get install libqrencode-dev

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a bitcoin-qt executable will be built by default.

Build requirements:

sudo dnf install gcc-c++ libtool make autoconf automake python3

Now, you can either build from self-compiled depends or install the required dependencies:

sudo dnf install libevent-devel boost-devel

SQLite is required for the descriptor wallet:

sudo dnf install sqlite-devel

Berkeley DB is only required for the legacy wallet. Fedora releases have only libdb-devel and libdb-cxx-devel packages, but these will install Berkeley DB 5.3 or later. This will break binary wallet compatibility with the distributed executables, which are based on Berkeley DB 4.8. If you do not care about wallet compatibility, pass --with-incompatible-bdb to configure. Otherwise, you can build Berkeley DB yourself.

To build Bitcoin Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode

Optional port mapping libraries (see: --with-miniupnpc and --with-natpmp):

sudo dnf install miniupnpc-devel libnatpmp-devel

ZMQ dependencies (provides ZMQ API):

sudo dnf install zeromq-devel

User-Space, Statically Defined Tracing (USDT) dependencies:

sudo dnf install systemtap-sdt-devel

GUI dependencies:

If you want to build bitcoin-qt, make sure that the required packages for Qt development are installed. Qt 5 is necessary to build the GUI. To build without GUI pass --without-gui.

To build with Qt 5 you need the following:

sudo dnf install qt5-qttools-devel qt5-qtbase-devel

Additionally, to support Wayland protocol for modern desktop environments:

sudo dnf install qt5-qtwayland

libqrencode (optional) can be installed with:

sudo dnf install qrencode-devel

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and a bitcoin-qt executable will be built by default.

See dependencies.md for a complete overview, and depends on how to compile them yourself, if you wish to not use the packages of your Linux distribution.

The legacy wallet uses Berkeley DB. To ensure backwards compatibility it is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. If you have to build it yourself, and don't want to use any other libraries built in depends, you can do:

make -C depends NO_BOOST=1 NO_LIBEVENT=1 NO_QT=1 NO_SQLITE=1 NO_NATPMP=1 NO_UPNP=1 NO_ZMQ=1 NO_USDT=1
...
to: /path/to/bitcoin/depends/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

and configure using the following:

export BDB_PREFIX="/path/to/bitcoin/depends/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

./configure \
    BDB_LIBS="-L${BDB_PREFIX}/lib -ldb_cxx-4.8" \
    BDB_CFLAGS="-I${BDB_PREFIX}/include"

Note: Make sure that BDB_PREFIX is an absolute path.

Note: You only need Berkeley DB if the legacy wallet is enabled (see Disable-wallet mode).

When the intention is to only run a P2P node, without a wallet, Bitcoin Core can be compiled in disable-wallet mode with:

./configure --disable-wallet

In this case there is no dependency on SQLite or Berkeley DB.

Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode using the getblocktemplate RPC call.

A list of additional configure flags can be displayed with:

./configure --help

This example lists the steps necessary to setup and build a command line only distribution of the latest changes on Arch Linux:

pacman --sync --needed autoconf automake boost gcc git libevent libtool make pkgconf python sqlite
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
cd bitcoin/
./autogen.sh
./configure
make check
./src/bitcoind

If you intend to work with legacy Berkeley DB wallets, see Berkeley DB section.