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.
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). |
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. |
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.
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.
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.
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_AV_TEST |
Build toxav test. | 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 \
..
Assuming all the requirements are met, just run
mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
make
make install
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
There are currently no instructions on how to build toxcore on Windows host in MSYS/Cygwin. Contribution of the instructions is welcome!
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
.
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.
There are nightly cross-compiled binaries available on Jenkins.
Shared | Static | |
---|---|---|
32-bit | Download | Download |
64-bit | Download | Download |