syncthing/dev/building.rst

.. _building:

Building Syncthing
==================

.. note::
    You probably only need to go through the build process if you are going
    to do development on Syncthing or if you need to do a special packaging
    of it. For all other purposes we recommend using the the official binary
    releases instead.

Branches and Tags
-----------------

You should base your work on the ``master`` branch when doing your
development. This branch is usually what will be going into the next
release and always what pull requests should be based on.

If you're looking to build and package a release of Syncthing you should
instead use the latest tag (``vX.Y.Z``) as the contents of ``master``
may be unstable and unsuitable for general consumption.

Prerequisites
-------------

-  Go **1.3** or higher. We recommend the latest version.
-  Git

If you're not already a Go developer, the easiest way to get going
is to download the latest version of Go as instructed in
http://golang.org/doc/install and ``export GOPATH=~``.

.. note::
        You need to set ``GOPATH`` correctly and the source **must** be checked
        out into ``$GOPATH/src/github.com/syncthing/syncthing``. The
        instructions below accomplish this correctly.

.. note::
        We use Go 1.5+ vendoring for our dependencies. If you are using the
        build script on Go 1.5 or higher this will just work. If you are
        building manually on Go 1.5 you need to set ``GO15VENDOREXPERIMENT=1``.
        If you are building on Go 1.3 or Go 1.4 you need to manually ensure the
        presence of our dependencies in GOPATH, by ``go get`` or copying from
        the ``vendor`` directory.

Building (Unix)
---------------

-  Install the prerequisites.
-  Open a terminal.

.. code-block:: bash

    # This should output "go version go1.3" or higher.
    $ go version

    # Go is particular about file locations; use this path unless you know very
    # well what you're doing.
    $ mkdir -p ~/src/github.com/syncthing
    $ cd ~/src/github.com/syncthing
    # Note that if you are building from a source code archive, you need to
    # rename the directory from syncthing-XX.YY.ZZ to syncthing
    $ git clone https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing

    # Now we have the source. Time to build!
    $ cd syncthing

    # You should be inside ~/src/github.com/syncthing/syncthing right now.
    $ go run build.go

Unless something goes wrong, you will have a ``syncthing`` binary built
and ready in ``~/src/github.com/syncthing/syncthing/bin``.

Building (Windows)
------------------

-  Install the prerequisites.
-  Open a ``cmd`` Window::

    # This should output "go version go1.3" or higher.
    > go version

    # Go is particular about file locations; use this path unless you know very
    # well what you're doing.
    > mkdir c:\src\github.com\syncthing
    > cd c:\src\github.com\syncthing
    # Note that if you are building from a source code archive, you need to
    # rename the directory from syncthing-XX.YY.ZZ to syncthing
    > git clone https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing

    # Now we have the source. Time to build!
    > cd syncthing
    > go run build.go

Unless something goes wrong, you will have a ``syncthing.exe`` binary
built and ready in ``c:\src\github.com\syncthing\syncthing\bin``.

Subcommands and Options
-----------------------

The following ``build.go`` subcommands and options exist.

``go run build.go install``
  Installs binaries in ``./bin`` (default command, this is what happens when
  build.go is run without any commands or parameters).

``go run build.go build``
  Forces a rebuild of the binary to the current directory; similar to
  ``install`` but slower.

``go run build.go clean``
  Removes build artefacts, guaranteeing a complete rebuild. Use this when
  switching between normal builds and noupgrade builds.

``go run build.go test``
  Runs the tests.

``go run build.go tar``
  Creates a Syncthing tar.gz dist file in the current directory. Assumes a
  Unixy build.

``go run build.go zip``
  Creates a Syncthing zip dist file in the current directory. Assumes a
  Windows build.

``go run build.go assets``
  Rebuilds the compiled-in GUI assets.

``go run build.go deps``
  Updates the in-repo dependencies.

``go run build.go xdr``
  Regenerates the XDR en/decoders. Only necessary when the protocol has
  changed.

The options ``-no-upgrade``, ``-goos`` and ``-goarch`` can be given to
influence ``install``, ``build``, ``tar`` and ``zip``. Examples:

``go run build.go -goos linux -goarch 386 tar``
  Builds a tar.gz distribution of Syncthing for linux-386.

``go run build.go -goos windows -no-upgrade zip``
  Builds a zip distribution of Syncthing for Windows (current architecture) with
  upgrading disabled.

.. note:: Building for a different operating system or architecture than your native one requires Go having been set up for cross compilation. The easiest way to get this right is to use the official Docker image, described below.

Building without Git
--------------------

Syncthing can be built perfectly fine from a source tarball of course.
If the tarball is from our build server it contains a file called
``RELEASE`` that informs the build system of the version being
built. If you're building from a different source package, for example
one automatically generated by Github, you must instead pass the
``-version`` flag to ``build.go``.

If you are building something that will be installed as a package
(Debian, RPM, ...) you almost certainly want to use ``-no-upgrade`` as
well to prevent the built in upgrade system from being activated.

``go run build.go -version v0.10.26 -no-upgrade tar``
  Builds a tar.gz distribution of syncthing for the current OS/arch, tagged as
  ``v0.10.26``, with upgrades disabled.