toxcore/INSTALL.md

Installation instructions

These instructions will guide you through the process of building and installing the toxcore library and its components, as well as getting already pre-built binaries.

Table of contents

• Overview
  • Components
    • Main
    • Secondary
• Building
  • Requirements
    • Library dependencies
    • Compiler requirements
    • Build system requirements
  • CMake options
  • Build process
    • Unix-like
    • Windows
      • Building on Windows host
        • Microsoft Visual Studio's Developer Command Prompt
        • MSYS/Cygwin
      • Cross-compiling from Linux
• Pre-built binaries
  • Linux
  • Windows

Overview

Components

Main

This repository, although called toxcore, in fact contains several libraries besides toxcore which complement it, as well as several executables. However, note that although these are separate libraries, at the moment, when building the libraries, they are all merged into a single toxcore library. Here is the full list of the main components that can be built using the CMake, their dependencies and descriptions.

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
toxcore	Library	libnacl or libsodium, libm, libpthread, librt	Cross-platform	The main Tox library that provides the messenger functionality.
toxav	Library	libtoxcore, libopus, libvpx	Cross-platform	Provides audio/video functionality.
toxencryptsave	Library	libtoxcore, libnacl or libsodium	Cross-platform	Provides encryption of Tox profiles (savedata), as well as arbitrary data.
DHT_bootstrap	Executable	libtoxcore	Cross-platform	A simple DHT bootstrap node.
tox-bootstrapd	Executable	libtoxcore, libconfig	Unix-like	Highly configurable DHT bootstrap node daemon (systemd, SysVinit, Docker).

Secondary

There are some programs that are not plugged into the CMake build system which you might find interesting. You would need to build those programs yourself. These programs reside in other/fun directory.

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
bootstrap_node_info	Script	python3	Cross-platform	Script for getting version and Message Of The Day (MOTD) information from a DHT bootstrap node.
cracker	Executable	libnacl or libsodium	Cross-platform	Tries to find a curve25519 key pair, hex representation of the public key of which starts with the specified byte sequence.
strkey	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Tries to find a curve25519 key pair, hex representation of the public key of which contains a specified byte pattern at the specified position or at any position.
make-funny-savefile	Script	python	Cross-platform	Generates Tox profile file (savedata file) with provided key pair. Useful for generating Tox profiles from the output of cracker or strkey programs.
sign	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Program for ed25519 file signing.

Building

Requirements

Library dependencies

Library dependencies are listed in the components table. The dependencies need to be satisfied for the components to be built. Note that if you don't have a dependency for some component, e.g. you don't have libopus installed required for building toxav component, building of that component is silently disabled.

Compiler requirements

The supported compilers are GCC, Clang and MinGW.

In theory, any compiler that fully supports C99 and accepts GCC flags should work.

There is a partial and experimental support of Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. We welcome any patches that help improve it.

You should have a C99 compatible compiler in order to build the main components. The secondary components might require the compiler to support GNU extensions.

Build system requirements

To build the main components you need to have CMake of at least 2.8.6 version installed. You also need to have pkg-config installed, the build system uses it to find dependency libraries.

There is some experimental accommodation for building natively on Windows, i.e. without having to use MSYS/Cygwin and pkg-config, but it uses exact hardcoded paths for finding libraries and supports building only of some of toxcore components, so your mileage might vary.

CMake options

There are some options that are available to configure the build.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
AUTOTEST	Enable autotests (mainly for CI).	ON or OFF	OFF
BOOTSTRAP_DAEMON	Enable building of tox-bootstrapd, the DHT bootstrap node daemon. For Unix-like systems only.	ON or OFF	ON
BUILD_MISC_TESTS	Build additional tests.	ON or OFF	OFF
BUILD_TOXAV	Whether to build the tox AV library.	ON or OFF	ON
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX	Path to where everything should be installed.	Directory path.	Platform-dependent. Refer to CMake documentation.
DHT_BOOTSTRAP	Enable building of DHT_bootstrap	ON or OFF	ON
ENABLE_SHARED	Build shared (dynamic) libraries for all modules.	ON or OFF	ON
ENABLE_STATIC	Build static libraries for all modules.	ON or OFF	ON
MIN_LOGGER_LEVEL	Logging level to use.	TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR or nothing (empty string) for default.	Empty string.
STRICT_ABI	Enforce strict ABI export in dynamic libraries.	ON or OFF	OFF
TEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Limit runtime of each test to the number of seconds specified.	Positive number or nothing (empty string).	Empty string.
USE_IPV6	Use IPv6 in tests.	ON or OFF	ON

You can get this list of option using the following commands

grep "option(" CMakeLists.txt cmake/*
grep "set(.* CACHE" CMakeLists.txt cmake/*

Note that some options might be considered only if other options are enabled.

Example of calling cmake with options

cmake \
  -D ENABLE_STATIC=OFF \
  -D MIN_LOGGER_LEVEL=DEBUG \
  -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt \
  -D TEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120 \
  ..

Build process

Unix-like

Assuming all the requirements are met, just run

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
make
make install

Windows

Building on Windows host

Microsoft Visual Studio's Developer Command Prompt

In addition to meeting the requirements, you need a version of Visual Studio (the community edition is enough) and a CMake version that's compatible with the Visual Studio version you're using.

You must also ensure that the msvc versions of dependencies you're using are placed in the correct folders.

For libsodium that is c-toxcore/third_party/libsodium, and for pthreads-w32, it's c-toxcore/third_party/pthreads-win32

Once all of this is done, from the Developer Command Prompt for VS, simply run

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
msbuild ALL_BUILD.vcxproj

MSYS/Cygwin

There are currently no instructions on how to build toxcore on Windows host in MSYS/Cygwin. Contribution of the instructions is welcome!

Cross-compiling from Linux

These cross-compilation instructions were tested on and written for 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04. You could generalize them for any Linux system, the only requirements are that you have Docker version of >= 1.9.0 and you are running 64-bit system.

The cross-compilation is fully automated by a parameterized Dockerfile.

Install Docker

apt-get update
apt-get install docker.io

Get the toxcore source code and navigate to other/docker/windows.

Build the container image based on the Dockerfile. The following options are available to customize the building of the container image.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
SUPPORT_ARCH_i686	Support building 32-bit toxcore.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
SUPPORT_ARCH_x86_64	Support building 64-bit toxcore.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
SUPPORT_TEST	Support running toxcore automated tests.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
VERSION_OPUS	Version of libopus to build toxcore with.	Git branch name.	v1.2.1
VERSION_SODIUM	Version of libsodium to build toxcore with.	Git branch name.	1.0.18
VERSION_VPX	Version of libvpx to build toxcore with.	Git branch name.	v1.6.1

Example of building a container image with options

cd other/docker/windows
docker build \
  --build-arg SUPPORT_TEST=true \
  -t toxcore \
  .

Run the container to build toxcore. The following options are available to customize the running of the container image.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
ALLOW_TEST_FAILURE	Don't stop if a test suite fails.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
ENABLE_ARCH_i686	Build 32-bit toxcore. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_ARCH_i686 enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
ENABLE_ARCH_x86_64	Build 64-bit toxcore. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_ARCH_x86_64 enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
ENABLE_TEST	Run the test suite. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_TEST enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
EXTRA_CMAKE_FLAGS	Extra arguments to pass to the CMake command when building toxcore.	CMake options.	-DWARNINGS=OFF -DBOOTSTRAP_DAEMON=OFF -DTEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=300

Example of running the container with options

docker run \
  -e ENABLE_TEST=true \
  -e ALLOW_TEST_FAILURE=true \
  -v /path/to/toxcore/sourcecode:/toxcore \
  -v /path/to/where/output/build/result:/prefix \
  --rm \
  toxcore

After the build succeeds, you should see the built toxcore libraries in /path/to/where/output/build/result.

Pre-built binaries

Linux

Toxcore is packaged by at least by the following distributions: ALT Linux, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mageia, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, ROSA and Slackware, according to the information from pkgs.org. Note that this list might be incomplete and some other distributions might package it too.

Debian and Ubuntu packages are available in tox.chat's package repository.

Windows

There are nightly cross-compiled binaries available on Jenkins.

	Shared	Static
32-bit	Download	Download
64-bit	Download	Download