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Building deno from Source

Below are instructions on how to build Deno from source. If you just want to use Deno you can download a prebuilt executable (more information in the Getting Started chapter).

Cloning the Repository​

Deno uses submodules, so you must remember to clone using --recurse-submodules.

Linux/Mac:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/denoland/deno.git

Windows:

  1. Enable "Developer Mode" (otherwise symlinks would require administrator privileges).
  2. Make sure you are using git version 2.19.2.windows.1 or newer.
  3. Set core.symlinks=true before the checkout:
    git config --global core.symlinks true
    git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/denoland/deno.git

Prerequisites​

Rust​

Deno requires a specific release of Rust. Deno may not support building on other versions, or on the Rust Nightly Releases. The version of Rust required for a particular release is specified in the rust-toolchain.toml file.

Update or Install Rust. Check that Rust installed/updated correctly:

rustc -V
cargo -V

Native Compilers and Linkers​

Many components of Deno require a native compiler to build optimized native functions.

Linux:

apt install --install-recommends -y clang-16 lld-16 cmake libglib2.0-dev

Mac:

Mac users must have the XCode Command Line Tools installed. (XCode already includes the XCode Command Line Tools. Run xcode-select --install to install it without XCode.)

CMake is also required, but does not ship with the Command Line Tools.

brew install cmake

Mac M1/M2:

For Apple aarch64 users lld must be installed.

brew install llvm
# Add /opt/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/ to $PATH

Windows:

  1. Get VS Community 2019 with the "Desktop development with C++" toolkit and make sure to select the following required tools listed below along with all C++ tools.

    • Visual C++ tools for CMake
    • Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17763.0)
    • Testing tools core features - Build Tools
    • Visual C++ ATL for x86 and x64
    • Visual C++ MFC for x86 and x64
    • C++/CLI support
    • VC++ 2015.3 v14.00 (v140) toolset for desktop

  2. Enable "Debugging Tools for Windows".

    • Go to "Control Panel" → "Programs" → "Programs and Features"
    • Select "Windows Software Development Kit - Windows 10"
    • → "Change" → "Change" → Check "Debugging Tools For Windows" → "Change" →"Finish".
    • Or use: Debugging Tools for Windows (Notice: it will download the files, you should install X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi file manually.)

Protobuf Compiler​

Building Deno requires the Protocol Buffers compiler.

Linux:

apt install -y protobuf-compiler
protoc --version  # Ensure compiler version is 3+

Mac:

brew install protobuf
protoc --version  # Ensure compiler version is 3+

Windows

Windows users can download the latest binary release from GitHub.

Python 3​

Deno requires Python 3 for running WPT tests. Ensure that a suffix-less python/python.exe exists in your PATH and it refers to Python 3.

Building Deno​

The easiest way to build Deno is by using a precompiled version of V8:

cargo build -vv

However, you may also want to build Deno and V8 from source code if you are doing lower-level V8 development, or using a platform that does not have precompiled versions of V8:

V8_FROM_SOURCE=1 cargo build -vv

When building V8 from source, there may be more dependencies. See rusty_v8's README for more details about the V8 build.

Building​

Build with Cargo:

# Build:
cargo build -vv

# Build errors?  Ensure you have latest main and try building again, or if that doesn't work try:
cargo clean && cargo build -vv

# Run:
./target/debug/deno run cli/tests/testdata/run/002_hello.ts