Install
- Library Requirements
- Ubuntu
- Fedora
- FreeBSD
- OpenBSD
- NixOS
- macOS
- Arch Linux
- Android
- Raspberry Pi
- Armbian
- Alpine
- Additional steps
Library Requirements
You will need several development libraries: * libsqlite3: for database support. * libgmp: for secp256k1 * zlib: for compression routines.
For actually doing development and running the tests, you will also need: * pip3: to install python-bitcoinlib * valgrind: for extra debugging checks
You will also need a version of bitcoind with segregated witness and estimatesmartfee with ECONOMICAL mode support, such as the 0.16 or above.
To Build on Ubuntu
OS version: Ubuntu 15.10 or above
Get dependencies:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
autoconf automake build-essential git libtool libgmp-dev libsqlite3-dev \
python3 python3-pip net-tools zlib1g-dev libsodium-dev gettext
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --user poetry
If you don't have Bitcoin installed locally you'll need to install that as well. It's now available via snapd.
sudo apt-get install snapd
sudo snap install bitcoin-core
# Snap does some weird things with binary names; you'll
# want to add a link to them so everything works as expected
sudo ln -s /snap/bitcoin-core/current/bin/bitcoin{d,-cli} /usr/local/bin/
Clone lightning:
git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning
Checkout a release tag:
git checkout v22.11.1
For development or running tests, get additional dependencies:
sudo apt-get install -y valgrind libpq-dev shellcheck cppcheck \
libsecp256k1-dev jq lowdown
If you can't install lowdown, a version will be built in-tree.
If you want to build the Rust plugins (currently, cln-grpc):
sudo apt-get install -y cargo rustfmt protobuf-compiler
There are two ways to build core lightning, and this depends on how you want use it.
To build cln to just install a tagged or master version you can use the following commands:
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install mako
./configure
make
sudo make install
N.B: if you want disable Rust because you do not want use it or simple you do not want the grpc-plugin, you can use ./configure --disable-rust.
To build core lightning for development purpose you can use the following commands:
pip3 install poetry
poetry shell
This will put you in a new shell to enter the following commands:
poetry install
./configure --enable-developer
make
make check VALGRIND=0
optionally, add -j$(nproc) after make to speed up compilation. (e.g. make -j$(nproc))
Running lightning:
bitcoind &
./lightningd/lightningd &
./cli/lightning-cli help
To Build on Fedora
OS version: Fedora 27 or above
Get dependencies:
$ sudo dnf update -y && \
sudo dnf groupinstall -y \
'C Development Tools and Libraries' \
'Development Tools' && \
sudo dnf install -y \
clang \
gettext \
git \
gmp-devel \
libsq3-devel \
python3-devel \
python3-pip \
python3-setuptools \
net-tools \
valgrind \
wget \
zlib-devel \
libsodium-devel && \
sudo dnf clean all
Make sure you have bitcoind available to run
Clone lightning:
Checkout a release tag:
Build and install lightning:
Running lightning (mainnet):
Running lightning on testnet:
To Build on FreeBSD
OS version: FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE or above
Core Lightning is in the FreeBSD ports, so install it as any other port (dependencies are handled automatically):
# pkg install c-lightning
for a binary, pre-compiled package. If you want to compile locally and fiddle with compile time options:
# cd /usr/ports/net-p2p/c-lightning && make install
See /usr/ports/net-p2p/c-lightning/Makefile for instructions on how to
build from an arbitrary git commit, instead of the latest release tag.
Note: Make sure you've set an utf-8 locale, e.g.
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8, otherwise manpage installation may fail.
Running lightning:
Configure bitcoind, if not already: add rpcuser=<foo> and rpcpassword=<bar>
to /usr/local/etc/bitcoin.conf, maybe also testnet=1.
Configure lightningd: copy /usr/local/etc/lightningd-bitcoin.conf.sample to
/usr/local/etc/lightningd-bitcoin.conf and edit according to your needs.
# service bitcoind start
# service lightningd start
# lightning-cli --rpc-file /var/db/c-lightning/bitcoin/lightning-rpc --lightning-dir=/var/db/c-lightning help
To Build on OpenBSD
OS version: OpenBSD 6.7
Install dependencies:
pkg_add git python gmake py3-pip libtool gmp
pkg_add automake # (select highest version, automake1.16.2 at time of writing)
pkg_add autoconf # (select highest version, autoconf-2.69p2 at time of writing)
mako otherwise we run into build errors:
Add /home/<username>/.local/bin to your path:
export PATH=$PATH:/home/<username>/.local/bin
Needed for configure:
Finally, build c-lightning:
gmake
To Build on NixOS
Use nix-shell launch a shell with a full clightning dev environment:
$ nix-shell -Q -p gdb sqlite autoconf git clang libtool gmp sqlite autoconf \
autogen automake libsodium 'python3.withPackages (p: [p.bitcoinlib])' \
valgrind --run make
To Build on macOS
Assuming you have Xcode and Homebrew installed. Install dependencies:
$ brew install autoconf automake libtool python3 gmp gnu-sed gettext libsodium protobuf
$ ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/gettext/0.20.1/bin/xgettext /usr/local/opt
$ export PATH="/usr/local/opt:$PATH"
If you need SQLite (or get a SQLite mismatch build error):
$ brew install sqlite
$ export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/sqlite/lib"
$ export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/sqlite/include"
Some library paths are different when using homebrew with M1 macs, therefore the following two variables need to be set for M1 machines
$ export CPATH=/opt/homebrew/include
$ export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib
If you need Python 3.x for mako (or get a mako build error):
$ brew install pyenv
$ echo -e 'if command -v pyenv 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then\n eval "$(pyenv init -)"\nfi' >> ~/.bash_profile
$ source ~/.bash_profile
$ pyenv install 3.7.8
$ pip3 install --upgrade pip
$ pip3 install poetry
If you don't have bitcoind installed locally you'll need to install that as well:
$ brew install berkeley-db4 boost miniupnpc pkg-config libevent
$ git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
$ cd bitcoin
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make src/bitcoind src/bitcoin-cli && make install
Clone lightning:
$ git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
$ cd lightning
Checkout a release tag:
$ git checkout v22.11.1
Build lightning:
$ poetry install
$ ./configure
$ poetry run make
Running lightning:
Note: Edit your ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf
to include rpcuser=<foo> and rpcpassword=<bar> first, you may also
need to include testnet=1
bitcoind &
./lightningd/lightningd &
./cli/lightning-cli help
To install the built binaries into your system, you'll need to run sudo make install:
sudo make install
On an M1 mac you may need to use this command instead:
sudo PATH="/usr/local/opt:$PATH" LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib CPATH=/opt/homebrew/include make install
To Build on Arch Linux
Install dependencies:
Clone Core Lightning:
Build Core Lightning:
Launch Core Lightning:
To cross-compile for Android
Make a standalone toolchain as per https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/standalone_toolchain.html. For Core Lightning you must target an API level of 24 or higher.
Depending on your toolchain location and target arch, source env variables such as:
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/android/toolchain/bin
# Change next line depending on target device arch
target_host=arm-linux-androideabi
export AR=$target_host-ar
export AS=$target_host-clang
export CC=$target_host-clang
export CXX=$target_host-clang++
export LD=$target_host-ld
export STRIP=$target_host-strip
Two makefile targets should not be cross-compiled so we specify a native CC:
make CC=clang clean ccan/tools/configurator/configurator
make clean -C ccan/ccan/cdump/tools \
&& make CC=clang -C ccan/ccan/cdump/tools
Install the qemu-user package.
This will allow you to properly configure
the build for the target device environment.
Build with:
BUILD=x86_64 MAKE_HOST=arm-linux-androideabi \
make PIE=1 DEVELOPER=0 \
CONFIGURATOR_CC="arm-linux-androideabi-clang -static"
To cross-compile for Raspberry Pi
Obtain the official Raspberry Pi toolchains. This document assumes compilation will occur towards the Raspberry Pi 3 (arm-linux-gnueabihf as of Mar. 2018).
Depending on your toolchain location and target arch, source env variables will need to be set. They can be set from the command line as such:
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/arm-linux-gnueabihf/bin
# Change next line depending on specific Raspberry Pi device
target_host=arm-linux-gnueabihf
export AR=$target_host-ar
export AS=$target_host-as
export CC=$target_host-gcc
export CXX=$target_host-g++
export LD=$target_host-ld
export STRIP=$target_host-strip
Install the qemu-user package. This will allow you to properly configure the
build for the target device environment.
Config the arm elf interpreter prefix:
export QEMU_LD_PREFIX=/path/to/raspberry/arm-bcm2708/arm-rpi-4.9.3-linux-gnueabihf/arm-linux-gnueabihf/sysroot/
Obtain and install cross-compiled versions of sqlite3, gmp and zlib:
Download and build zlib:
wget https://zlib.net/fossils/zlib-1.2.13.tar.gz
tar xvf zlib-1.2.13.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.13
./configure --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install
Download and build sqlite3:
wget https://www.sqlite.org/2018/sqlite-src-3260000.zip
unzip sqlite-src-3260000.zip
cd sqlite-src-3260000
./configure --enable-static --disable-readline --disable-threadsafe --disable-load-extension --host=$target_host --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install
Download and build gmp:
wget https://gmplib.org/download/gmp/gmp-6.1.2.tar.xz
tar xvf gmp-6.1.2.tar.xz
cd gmp-6.1.2
./configure --disable-assembly --host=$target_host --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install
Then, build Core Lightning with the following commands:
./configure
make
To compile for Armbian
For all the other Pi devices out there, consider using Armbian.
You can compile in customize-image.sh using the instructions for Ubuntu.
A working example that compiles both bitcoind and Core Lightning for Armbian can be found here.
To compile for Alpine
Get dependencies:
apk update
apk add --virtual .build-deps ca-certificates alpine-sdk autoconf automake git libtool \
gmp-dev sqlite-dev python3 py3-mako net-tools zlib-dev libsodium gettext
git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning
git submodule update --init --recursive
Additional steps
Go to README for more information how to create an address, add funds, connect to a node, etc.