Installation: Build from Source

Lighthouse builds on Linux, macOS, and Windows (via WSL only).

Compilation should be easy. In fact, if you already have Rust installed all you need is:

  • git clone https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse.git
  • cd lighthouse
  • git checkout stable
  • make

If this doesn't work or is not clear enough, see the Detailed Instructions below. If you have further issues, see Troubleshooting. If you'd prefer to use Docker, see the Docker Guide.

Updating lighthouse

You can update Lighthouse to a specific version by running the commands below. The lighthouse directory will be the location you cloned Lighthouse to during the installation process. ${VERSION} will be the version you wish to build in the format vX.X.X.

  • cd lighthouse
  • git fetch
  • git checkout ${VERSION}
  • make

Detailed Instructions

  1. Install Rust and Cargo with rustup.
    • Use the stable toolchain (it's the default).
    • Check the Troubleshooting section for additional dependencies (e.g., cmake).
  2. Clone the Lighthouse repository.
    • Run $ git clone https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse.git
    • Change into the newly created directory with $ cd lighthouse
  3. Build Lighthouse with $ make.
  4. Installation was successful if $ lighthouse --help displays the command-line documentation.

First time compilation may take several minutes. If you experience any failures, please reach out on discord or create an issue.

Windows Support

Compiling or running Lighthouse natively on Windows is not currently supported. However, Lighthouse can run successfully under the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). If using Ubuntu under WSL, you can should install the Ubuntu dependencies listed in the Dependencies (Ubuntu) section.

Troubleshooting

Dependencies

Ubuntu

Several dependencies may be required to compile Lighthouse. The following packages may be required in addition a base Ubuntu Server installation:

sudo apt install -y git gcc g++ make cmake pkg-config

macOS

You will need cmake. You can install via homebrew:

brew install cmake

Command is not found

Lighthouse will be installed to CARGO_HOME or $HOME/.cargo. This directory needs to be on your PATH before you can run $ lighthouse.

See "Configuring the PATH environment variable" (rust-lang.org) for more information.

Compilation error

Make sure you are running the latest version of Rust. If you have installed Rust using rustup, simply type $ rustup update.

If compilation fails with (signal: 9, SIGKILL: kill), this could mean your machine ran out of memory during compilation. If you are on a resource-constrained device you can look into cross compilation.

If compilation fails with error: linking with cc failed: exit code: 1, try running cargo clean.