These are instructions for building stellar-core from source.
For a potentially quicker set up, the following projects could be good alternatives:
- stellar-core in a docker container
- stellar-core and horizon in a docker container
- pre-compiled packages
In general, you should aim to run the most recent stable version of core, so make sure to keep track of new releases.
We highly recommend upgrading to the latest core release within 30 days of a release as highlighted in our protocol and security release notes in case the release contains security fixes that could be exploited (we do not disclose ahead of time if a release contains security fixes to give people time to upgrade).
As a consequence, old, potentially insecure or abandoned nodes running releases that are older than 90 days will get blocked by newer nodes (if there are newer releases of course).
Best is to use the latest stable release that can be downloaded from https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core/releases
Alternatively, branches are organized in the following way:
branch name | description | quality bar |
---|---|---|
master | development branch | all unit tests passing |
testnet | version deployed to testnet | acceptance tests passing |
prod | version currently deployed on the live network | no recall class issue found in testnet and staging |
For convenience, we also keep a record in the form of release tags of the versions that make it to production:
- pre-releases are versions that get deployed to testnet
- releases are versions that made it all the way to production
We maintain a pre-configured Docker configuration ready for development with VSCode.
See the dev container's README for more detail.
stellar-core
does not have many dependencies.
If core was configured (see below) to work with Postgresql, a local Postgresql server will need to be deployed to the same host.
To install Postgresql, follow instructions from the Postgresql download page.
- c++ toolchain and headers that supports c++17
clang
>= 12.0g++
>= 10.0
pkg-config
bison
andflex
libpq-dev
unless you./configure --disable-postgres
in the build step below.- 64-bit system
clang-format-12
(formake format
to work)sed
andperl
libunwind-dev
- Rust toolchain (see Installing Rust subsection)
cargo
>= 1.74rust
>= 1.74
Building the Rust components requires the cargo
package manager and build system, as well as the rustc
compiler, both version 1.74 or later.
We recommend installing Rust using the Rust project's rustup
installer, which can be found on rustup.rs.
We also include a script in the repository install-rust.sh
that downloads and runs a known version of rustup
on x64-linux hosts, such as those used for CI and packaging.
You can install the test toolchain to build and run stellar-core with the latest version of the llvm toolchain.
Alternatively, if you want to just depend on stock Ubuntu, you will have to build with clang and have use libc++
instead of libstdc++
when compiling.
Ubuntu 20.04 has clang-12 available, that you can install with
# install clang-12 toolchain
sudo apt-get install clang-12
After installing packages, head to building with clang and libc++.
# NOTE: newer version of the compilers are not
# provided by stock distributions
# and are provided by the /test toolchain
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
sudo apt-get update
# common packages
sudo apt-get install git build-essential pkg-config autoconf automake libtool bison flex libpq-dev libunwind-dev parallel sed perl
# if using clang
sudo apt-get install clang-12
# clang with libstdc++
sudo apt-get install gcc-10
# if using g++ or building with libstdc++
# sudo apt-get install gcc-10 g++-10 cpp-10
In order to make changes, you'll need to install the proper version of clang-format.
In order to install the llvm (clang) toolchain, you may have to follow instructions on https://apt.llvm.org/
sudo apt-get install clang-format-12
Some newer Ubuntu versions have reported issues with older compiler versions. For Ubuntu 24.04 and other newer Linux distros, it is recommended to build with gcc-13 or clang-18. This can be installed as follows:
# if using clang
sudo apt-get install clang-18
# if using g++ or building with libstdc++
# sudo apt-get install gcc-13 g++-13 cpp-13
# if building with libc++
sudo apt-get install libc++-18-dev libc++abi-18-dev
Note that installing libc++-18 via apt will uninstall all other libc++ versions.
Additionally, some newer Linux distros no longer package clang-format-12, and newer clang-format versions are not backwards compatible. To build from source, you'll need to do the following:
sudo apt-get install ninja-build cmake
git clone --depth 1 --branch llvmorg-12.0.1 https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git
cd llvm-project
sed -i "17i #include <stdint.h>" llvm/include/llvm/Support/Signals.h
CC=clang CXX=clang++ cmake -S llvm -B build -G Ninja -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cd build
ninja clang-format
sudo cp bin/clang-format /usr/bin/clang-format-12
cd ../..
rm -rf llvm-project/
When building on MacOS, here's some dependencies you'll need:
- Install xcode
- Install Rust
- Install homebrew
brew install libsodium libtool autoconf automake pkg-config libpq openssl parallel ccache bison gnu-sed perl coreutils
You'll also need to configure pkg-config by adding the following to your shell (.zshenv
or .zshrc
):
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:$(brew --prefix)/opt/libpq/lib/pkgconfig"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:$(brew --prefix)/opt/openssl@3/lib/pkgconfig"
export PATH="$(brew --prefix bison)/bin:$PATH"
- Install
clang-format-12
Note:
brew
does not contain a cask forclang-format-12
, and other versions ofclang-format
have different formatting behavior.
To install clang-format-12
, run the commands listed below.
# Download clang+llvm 12.0.0 for x86_64 apple darwin.
curl -OL https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-12.0.0/clang+llvm-12.0.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.xz
# Unarchive the download.
tar -xf clang+llvm-12.0.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.xz
# Copy the contents of bin/clang-format to /usr/local/bin.
sudo cp -R clang+llvm-12.0.0-x86_64-apple-darwin/bin/clang-format /usr/local/bin
# Ensure "clang-format version 12.0.0" is printed.
clang-format --version
Note: macOS will block the execution for security purposes, open System Preferences > Security & Privacy and allow
clang-format
to run.
git clone https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core.git
cd stellar-core
git submodule init
git submodule update
- Type
./autogen.sh
. - Type
./configure
(If configure complains about compiler versions, tryCXX=clang-12 ./configure
orCXX=g++-10 ./configure
or similar, depending on your compiler.) - Type
make
ormake -j<N>
(where<N>
is the number of parallel builds, a number less than the number of CPU cores available, e.g.make -j3
) - Type
make check
to run tests. - Type
make install
to install.
On some systems, building with libc++
, LLVM's version of the standard library can be done instead of libstdc++
(typically used on Linux).
NB: there are newer versions available of both clang and libc++, you will have to use the versions suited for your system.
You may need to install additional packages for this, for example, on Linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with clang-12:
# install libc++ headers
sudo apt-get install libc++-12-dev libc++abi-12-dev
Here are sample steps to achieve this:
export CC=clang-12
export CXX=clang++-12
export CFLAGS="-O3 -g1 -fno-omit-frame-pointer"
export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS -stdlib=libc++"
git clone https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core.git
cd stellar-core/
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j6
stellar-core
is lightweight and can run on many edge devices such as a Raspberry Pi. However, there is currently a
linker bug in the default ARM libgcc
runtime, so compiler-rt
must be used instead.
Here are sample steps to achieve this:
export CC=clang-12
export CXX=clang++-12
export CFLAGS="-O3 -g1 -fno-omit-frame-pointer --rtlib=compiler-rt"
export CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS -stdlib=libc++"
git clone https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core.git
cd stellar-core/
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j4
Configuring with --enable-tracy
will build and embed the client component of the Tracy high-resolution tracing system in the stellar-core
binary.
The tracing client will activate automatically when stellar-core is running, and will listen for connections from Tracy servers (a command-line capture utility, or a cross-platform GUI).
You do not need to download the tracy server, and will likely run into versioning issues if you do. Instead, the Tracy server components can also be compiled by configuring with --enable-tracy-gui
or --enable-tracy-capture
. Once compiled, the tracy server can be started with ./tracy-gui
or ./tracy
, respectively.
The GUI depends on the capstone
, freetype
and glfw
libraries and their headers, and on linux or BSD the GTK-2.0
libraries and headers. On Windows and MacOS, native toolkits are used instead.
# On Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install libcapstone-dev libfreetype6-dev libglfw3-dev libgtk2.0-dev
# On MacOS
$ brew install capstone freetype2 glfw