Installing cardano-node and cardano-cli from source

Overview

This guide will show you how to compile and install the cardano-node and cardano-cli into your operating system of choice, directly from the source-code. It will enable you to interact with the Cardano blockchain, including but not limited to sending/receiving transactions, creating NFTs, posting transaction metadata into the blockchain, minting/burning native tokens, creating a stake pool, executing smart contracts, and so much more!

note

If you want to avoid compiling the binaries yourself, you can download the latest versions of cardano-node and cardano-cli from the links below.

• Linux
• MacOS
• Windows

There are newer binaries available:

• latest release

The components can be built and run on Windows and MacOS, but we recommend that stake pool operators use Linux in production to take advantage of the associated performance advantages.

Prerequisites

To set up the components, you will need:

• Windows, MacOS, or Linux for your operating system
• A CPU with at least two cores
• 8GB of RAM and at least 10GB of free disk space

Choose your Platform

• Linux
• MacOS
• Windows

Linux

In this section, we will walk you through the process of downloading, compiling, and installing cardano-node and cardano-cli into your Linux-based operating system.

Installing Operating System dependencies

To download the source code and build it, you need the following packages and tools on your Linux system:

• the version control system git,
• the gcc C-compiler,
• C++ support for gcc,
• developer libraries for the arbitrary precision library gmp,
• developer libraries for the compression library zlib,
• developer libraries for systemd,
• developer libraries for ncurses,
• ncurses compatibility libraries,
• the Haskell build tool cabal,
• the GHC Haskell compiler (version 8.10.4 or above).

In Redhat, Fedora, and Centos:

sudo yum update -ysudo yum install git gcc gcc-c++ tmux gmp-devel make tar xz wget zlib-devel libtool autoconf -ysudo yum install systemd-devel ncurses-devel ncurses-compat-libs -y

For Debian/Ubuntu, use the following instead:

sudo apt-get update -ysudo apt-get install automake build-essential pkg-config libffi-dev libgmp-dev libssl-dev libtinfo-dev libsystemd-dev zlib1g-dev make g++ tmux git jq wget libncursesw5 libtool autoconf -y

If you are using a different flavor of Linux, you will need to use the correct package manager for your platform instead of yum or apt-get, and the names of the packages you need to install might differ.

Installing GHC and Cabal

The fastest way to install GHC (Glassglow Haskell Compiler) and Cabal (Common Architecture for Building Applications and Libraries) is to use ghcup.

Use the following command to install ghcup

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://get-ghcup.haskell.org | sh

Please follow the instructions and provide the necessary input to the installer. Once complete, you should have ghc and cabal installed to your system.

note

ghcup will try to detect your shell and ask you to add it to the environment variables. Please restart your shell/terminal after installing ghcup

You can check if ghcup has been installed correctly by typing ghcup --version into the terminal. You should see something similar to the following:

The GHCup Haskell installer, version v0.1.14.1

ghcup will install the latest stable version of ghc. However, as of the time of writing this, Input-Output recommends using ghc 8.10.4. So, we will use ghcup to install and switch to the required version.

ghcup install ghc 8.10.4ghcup set ghc 8.10.4

Finally, we check if we have the correct ghc and cabal versions installed.

Check ghc version:

ghc --version

You should see something like this:

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 8.10.4

Check cabal version:

cabal --version

You should see something like this:

cabal-install version 3.4.0.0compiled using version 3.4.0.0 of the Cabal library

important

Please confirm that the versions you have installed match the recommended versions above. If not, check if you have missed any of the previous steps.

Downloading & Compiling

Let's create a working directory to store the source-code and builds for the components.

mkdir -p ~/cardano-srccd ~/cardano-src

Next, we will download, compile and install libsodium.

git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/libsodiumcd libsodiumgit checkout 66f017f1./autogen.sh./configuremakesudo make install

Then we will add the following environment variables to your shell profile. E.G ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc depending on what shell application you are using. Add the following to the bottom of your shell profile/config file so that the compiler can be aware that libsodium is installed on your system.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"

Once saved, we will then reload your shell profile to use the new variables. We can do that by typing source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc (depending on the shell application you use).

Now we are ready to download, compile and install cardano-node and cardano-cli. But first, we have to make sure we are back at the root of our working directory:

cd ~/cardano-src

Download the cardano-node repository:

git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node.gitcd cardano-nodegit fetch --all --recurse-submodules --tags

Switch the repository to the latest tagged commit:

git checkout tags/1.27.0

important

You can check the latest available version/tag by visiting the cardano-node Github Release page. At the time of writing this, the current version is 1.27.0.

Configuring the build options

We explicitly use the ghc version that we installed earlier. This avoids defaulting to a system version of ghc that might be newer or older than the one you have installed.

cabal configure --with-compiler=ghc-8.10.4

Update the local project file to use libsodium that you installed earlier.

echo "package cardano-crypto-praos" >>  cabal.project.localecho "  flags: -external-libsodium-vrf" >>  cabal.project.local

Building and installing the node

We can now build the Haskell-based cardano-node to produce executable binaries.

cabal build all

Install the newly built node and CLI commands to the ~/.local/bin directory:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bincp -p "$(./scripts/bin-path.sh cardano-node)" ~/.local/bin/cp -p "$(./scripts/bin-path.sh cardano-cli)" ~/.local/bin/

We have to add this line below our shell profile so that the shell/terminal can recognize that cardano-node and cardano-cli are global commands. (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc depending on the shell application you use)

export PATH="~/.local/bin/:$PATH"

Once saved, reload your shell profile by typing source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc (depending on the shell application you use).

Check the version that has been installed:

cardano-cli --versioncardano-node --version

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Cardano components into your Linux system! 🎉🎉🎉

Next, we will talk about how to run cardano-node.

MacOS

In this section, we will walk you through the process of downloading, compiling, and installing cardano-node and cardano-cli into your MacOS-based operating system.

note

Please note that this guide only supports Intel-based Apple MacOS hardware. Apple Silicon (M1) hardware guide is still in progress.

Installing Operating System dependencies

To download the source code and build it, you need the following packages and tools on your MacOS system:

• Xcode - The Apple Development IDE and SDK/Tools
• Xcode Command Line Tools, you can install it by typing xcode-select --install in the terminal.
• Homebrew - The Missing Package Manager for MacOS (or Linux)

Installing Homebrew packages

For the cardano-node and cardano-cli components to compile properly, we will need to install some libraries via brew:

brew install jqbrew install libtoolbrew install autoconfbrew install automakebrew install pkg-config

Installing GHC and Cabal

The fastest way to install GHC (Glassglow Haskell Compiler) and Cabal (Common Architecture for Building Applications and Libraries) is to use ghcup.

Use the following command to install ghcup

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://get-ghcup.haskell.org | sh

Please follow the instructions and provide the necessary input to the installer. Once complete, you should have ghc and cabal installed on your system.

note

ghcup will try to detect your shell and will ask you to add it to the environment variables. Please restart your shell/terminal after installing ghcup

You can check if ghcup has been installed properly by typing ghcup --version into the terminal. You should see something similar to the following:

The GHCup Haskell installer, version v0.1.14.1

ghcup will install the latest stable version of ghc. However, as of the time writing this, Input-Output recommends using ghc 8.10.4. So, we will use ghcup to install and switch to the required version.

ghcup install ghc 8.10.4ghcup set ghc 8.10.4

Finally, we check if we have the correct ghc and cabal versions installed.

Check ghc version:

ghc --version

You should see something like this:

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 8.10.4

Check cabal version:

cabal --version

You should see something like this:

cabal-install version 3.4.0.0compiled using version 3.4.0.0 of the Cabal library

important

Please confirm that the versions you have installed matches the recommended versions above. If not, check if you have missed any of the previous steps.

Downloading & Compiling

Let's create a working directory to store the source-code and builds for the components.

mkdir -p ~/cardano-srccd ~/cardano-src

Next, we will download, compile and install libsodium.

git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/libsodiumcd libsodiumgit checkout 66f017f1./autogen.sh./configuremakesudo make install

Then we will add the following environment variables to your shell profile. E.G ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc depending on what shell application you are using. Add the following to the bottom of your shell profile/config file so the compiler can be aware that libsodium is installed on your system.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"

Once saved, we will then reload your shell profile to use the new variables. We can do that by typing source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc (depending on the shell application you use).

Now we are ready to download, compile and install cardano-node and cardano-cli. But first, we have to make sure we are back at the root of our working directory:

cd ~/cardano-src

Download the cardano-node repository:

git clone https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node.gitcd cardano-nodegit fetch --all --recurse-submodules --tags

Switch the repository to the latest tagged commit:

git checkout tags/1.27.0

important

You can check the latest available version / tag by visiting the cardano-node Github Release page. At the time of writing this, the current version is 1.27.0.

Configuring the build options

We explicitly use the ghc version that we installed earlier. This avoids defaulting to a system version of ghc that might be newer or older than the one you have installed.

cabal configure --with-compiler=ghc-8.10.4

Update the local project file to use libsodium that you installed earlier.

echo "package cardano-crypto-praos" >>  cabal.project.localecho "  flags: -external-libsodium-vrf" >>  cabal.project.local

Building and installing the node

cabal build all

Install the newly built node and CLI to the ~/.local/bin directory:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bincp -p "$(./scripts/bin-path.sh cardano-node)" ~/.local/bin/cp -p "$(./scripts/bin-path.sh cardano-cli)" ~/.local/bin/

We have to add this line below our shell profile so that the shell/terminal can recognize that cardano-node and cardano-cli are global commands. (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc depending on the shell application you use)

export PATH="~/.local/bin/:$PATH"

Once saved, reload your shell profile by typing source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc (depending on the shell application you use).

Check the version that has been installed:

cardano-cli --versioncardano-node --version

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Cardano components into your MacOS system! 🎉🎉🎉

Next, we will talk about how to run cardano-node.

Windows

important

Currently, the Windows installation guide is still in progress. In the meantime, we recommend using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to get a Linux environment on top of Windows. Once installed, you can use the Linux guide to install and run cardano-node within WSL.