Compiling for X11 (Linux, *BSD)

See also Exporting for Linux.

Requirements

For compiling under Linux or other Unix variants, the following is required:

• GCC 7+ or Clang 6+.
• Python 3.5+.
• #! /usr/bin/python3. Use the command which scons to find the location of the SCons script file.
• pkg-config (used to detect the dependencies below).
• X11, Xcursor, Xinerama, Xi and XRandR development libraries.
• MesaGL development libraries.
• ALSA development libraries.
• PulseAudio development libraries.
• Optional - libudev (build with udev=yes).
• Optional - yasm (for WebM SIMD optimizations). See also Getting the source. Introduction to the buildsystem.

  Distro-specific one-liners

  Compiling

  Start a terminal, go to the root dir of the engine source code and type:

  scons -j8 platform=x11

  -j (jobs) flag, is to have at least as many threads compiling Godot as you have cores in your CPU, if not one or two more. Feel free to add the -j option to any SCons command you see below. If all goes well, the resulting binary executable will be placed in the “bin” subdirectory. This executable file contains the whole engine and runs without any dependencies. Executing it will bring up the project manager. Note If you wish to compile using Clang rather than GCC, use this command:

  scons platform=x11 use_llvm=yes

  Using Clang appears to be a requirement for OpenBSD, otherwise fonts would not build. Note target=release_debug. use_lto=yes. As link-time optimization is a memory-intensive process, this will require about 7 GB of available RAM while compiling. Note Self-contained mode by creating a file called ._sc_ or _sc_ in the bin/ folder.

  Compiling a headless/server build

  headless build which provides editor functionality to export projects in an automated manner, use:

  scons -j8 platform=server tools=yes target=release_debug

  server build which can be used with remote debugging tools, use:

  scons -j8 platform=server tools=no target=release_debug

  server build which is optimized to run dedicated game servers, use:

  scons -j8 platform=server tools=no target=release

  Building export templates

  Warning Linux binaries usually won’t run on distributions that are older than the distribution they were built on. If you wish to distribute binaries that work on most distributions, you should build them on an old distribution such as Ubuntu 16.04. You can use a virtual machine or a container to set up a suitable build environment. To build X11 (Linux, *BSD) export templates, run the build system with the following parameters: -

  scons platform=x11 tools=no target=release bits=32scons platform=x11 tools=no target=release_debug bits=32

  -

  scons platform=x11 tools=no target=release bits=64scons platform=x11 tools=no target=release_debug bits=64

  Note that cross-compiling for the opposite bits (64/32) as your host platform is not always straight-forward and might need a chroot environment. To create standard export templates, the resulting files must be copied to:

  $HOME/.local/share/godot/templates/[gd-version]/

  and named like this (even for *BSD which is seen as “Linux X11” by Godot):

  linux_x11_32_debuglinux_x11_32_releaselinux_x11_64_debuglinux_x11_64_release

  However, if you are writing your custom modules or custom C++ code, you might instead want to configure your binaries as custom export templates here: bin/ directory of your Godot source folder, so the next time you build, you automatically have the custom templates referenced.

  Using Clang and LLD for faster development

  You can also use Clang and LLD to build Godot. This has two upsides compared to the default GCC + GNU ld setup:
• LLD links Godot significantly faster compared to GNU ld or gold. This leads to faster iteration times.
• Clang tends to give more useful error messages compared to GCC. lld package from your distribution’s package manager then use the following SCons command:

  scons platform=x11 use_llvm=yes use_lld=yes

  .llvm suffix will be created in the bin/ folder. It’s still recommended to use GCC for production builds as they can be compiled using link-time optimization, making the resulting binaries smaller and faster.

  Using Pyston for faster development

  Pyston to run SCons. Pyston is a JIT-enabled implementation of the Python language (which SCons is written in). It is currently only compatible with Linux. Pyston can speed up incremental builds significantly, often by a factor between 1.5× and 2×. Pyston can be combined with Clang and LLD to get even faster builds.
• latest portable Pyston release.
• .tar.gz to a set location, such as $HOME/.local/opt/pyston/ (create folders as needed).
• cd to reach the extracted Pyston folder from a terminal, then run ./pyston -m pip install scons to install SCons within Pyston.
• PATH environment variable:

ln -s ~/.local/opt/pyston/bin/scons ~/.local/bin/pyston-scons

• scons <build arguments>, run pyston-scons <build arguments> to compile Godot. pyston-scons after creating the symbolic link, make sure $HOME/.local/bin/ is part of your user’s PATH environment variable.