Building Arweave

1. Clone the Repo

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ArweaveTeam/arweave.git
cd arweave

2. Install Dependencies

2.1 Linux Dependencies

• Ubuntu 22 or 24 is recommended

• OpenSSL development headers

• GCC or Clang (GCC 8+ recommended)

• Erlang OTP v26, with OpenSSL support

• GNU Make

• CMake (CMake version > 3.10.0)

• SQLite3 header

• GNU MP

• On some systems you might need to install libncurses-dev.

Erlang R26 is now required. Unfortunately, Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 do not natively support Erlang R26 and a PPA repository is required. The RabbitMQ Team is maintaining this release for all Ubuntu version:

# add rabbitmq ppa repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rabbitmq/rabbitmq-erlang-26
sudo apt update

# install required packages
sudo apt install erlang libssl-dev libgmp-dev libsqlite3-dev make cmake gcc g++

2.2 MacOS Dependencies

Syncing, packing, and mining is not supported on MacOS. MacOS has only been validated to run a VDF Server. Refer to the mining VDF guide for more information on running your own VDF server.

1. Install Homebrew

2. Install dependencies

brew install gmp erlang@26 cmake pkg-config

1. Homebrew may ask you to update your LDFLAGS for erlang: don't. You should however update your PATH as requested.

2. Build

The Arweave repo supports several build types, each configured for a different used case. The build types are defined in the rebar.config

• default / prod: configured to run against mainnet. This is the normal build type. default and prod are aliases for each other.

• testnet: configured to run against a separate testnet. Search for testenet in the rebar.config for more instructions.

• test: configured for automated tests. See Automated Tests for more information.

• e2e: configured for the end-to-end tests. See Automated Tests for more information.

• localnet: configurd to launch a new chain from genesis. See Localnet for more information.

To build a runnable Arweave binary for given build type:

./ar-rebar3 BUILDTYPE release

e.g.

./ar-rebar3 default release
./ar-rebar3 prod release
./ar-rebar3 testnet release

3. Run

For instructions on running arweave see Running Arweave.

4. Developer Mode

If you set the environment variable ARWEAVE_DEV to any value then Arweave will be automatically recompiled whenever you launch. The built type is release and only changed artifacts will be rebuilt. You will get the same behavior if you launch Arweave via ./bin/arweave-dev.