docs.waku.org/docs/guides/nwaku/build-source.md

title
Build Nwaku from Source

This guide provides detailed steps to build a nwaku node from the source to access the latest development version or a specific commit or tag of nwaku. If you prefer a more stable version, download a pre-compiled binary instead.

:::info A minimum of 2GB of RAM is required to build nwaku. The build process will only succeed on systems that meet this requirement. :::

Install Dependencies

To clone and build nwaku, you will need the standard developer tools, including a C compiler, Make, Bash, and Git.

Linux

To install the dependencies on common Linux distributions, use:

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs';
import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem';

sudo apt-get install build-essential git

dnf install @development-tools

# Using your favorite AUR helper
[AUR HELPER] -S base-devel

macOS

If you use Homebrew to manage packages, use:

brew install cmake

Clone the Repository

Get the source code from the GitHub repository. The default branch is master, the release candidate for major updates.

git clone https://github.com/waku-org/nwaku
cd nwaku

:::tip You can use git tag -l to check specific version tags. :::

Build the Binary

Build the nwaku binary:

make wakunode2

The first make invocation updates to all Git submodules. After each git pull, run make update to keep the submodules updated in the future.

make update wakunode2

Run the Binary

Nwaku will create the wakunode2 binary in the ./build/ directory.

# Run with default configuration
./build/wakunode2

# See available command line options
./build/wakunode2 --help

To learn more about running nwaku, please refer to:

• Run a Nwaku Node
• Run Nwaku in Docker Container
• Run Nwaku with Docker Compose
• Node Configuration Methods

Run Test Suite

Run the tests for both Waku v1 and Waku v2:

make test