You are generally recommended to use your distro's package manager to install Notcurses; it is available prepackaged on many distributions. If you wish to build from source, read on.
Acquire the current source via
git clone https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses.git
There are no submodules. Dependencies are fairly minimal.
Install build dependencies:
apt-get install build-essential cmake doctest-dev libavdevice-dev libdeflate-dev libgpm-dev libncurses-dev libqrcodegen-dev libswscale-dev libunistring-dev pandoc pkg-config
If you only intend to build core Notcurses (without multimedia support), you
can omit libavdevice-dev
from this list. zlib1g-dev
can be substituted for
libdeflate-dev
; build with -DUSE_DEFLATE=off
in this case. If you don't
want to generate QR codes, you can omit 'libqrcodegen-dev'.
If you want to build the Python wrappers, you'll also need:
apt-get install python3-cffi python3-dev python3-pypandoc python3-setuptools
Install build dependencies:
dnf install cmake doctest-devel libdeflate-devel ncurses-devel gpm-devel libqrcodegen-devel libunistring-devel OpenImageIO-devel pandoc
If you only intend to build core Notcurses (without multimedia support), you
can omit OpenImageIO-devel
. If you're building outside Fedora Core (e.g. with
RPM Fusion), you might want to use FFmpeg rather than OpenImageIO. If you don't
want to generate QR codes, you can omit 'libqrcodegen-devel'. zlib-devel
can
substitute for libdeflate-devel
; build with -DUSE_DEFLATE=off
in this case.
Install build dependencies:
pkg install archivers/libdeflate devel/ncurses multimedia/ffmpeg graphics/qr-code-generator devel/libunistring
If you only intend to build core Notcurses (without multimedia support), you
can omit multimedia/ffmpeg
. If you do not want to deflate Kitty graphics,
you can omit 'archivers/libdeflate'; build with -DUSE_DEFLATE=off
in this
case. If you don't want to generate QR codes, you can omit
'graphics/qr-code-generator'.
Building on Windows requires MSYS2 in its 64-bit Universal C Runtime (UCRT) incarnation. This builds native Windows DLLs and EXEs, though it does not use Visual Studio. Install build dependencies:
pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libdeflate mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libunistring mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-ncurses mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openimageio mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain
Note that on Windows, OpenImageIO is (at the moment) recommended over FFmpeg.
If you only intend to build core Notcurses (without multimedia support), you
can omit mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openimageio
. If you do not want to deflate Kitty
graphics, you can omit 'mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libdeflate'; build with
-DUSE_DEFLATE=off
in this case.
You'll want to add -DUSE_DOCTEST=off -DUSE_PANDOC=off
to your cmake
invocation.
notcurses-tester
does not currently work on Windows, and you probably don't want
to build the UNIX-style documentation.
- Create a subdirectory, traditionally
build
(this is not strictly necessary, but it keeps your source tree clean). Enter the directory. cmake ..
- You might want to set e.g.
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE
. Use-DVAR=val
. - To build without multimedia support, use
-DUSE_MULTIMEDIA=none
.
- You might want to set e.g.
make
make test
make install
sudo ldconfig
The default multimedia engine is FFmpeg. You can select a different engine
using USE_MULTIMEDIA
. Valid values are ffmpeg
, oiio
(for OpenImageIO),
or none
. Without a multimedia engine, Notcurses will be unable to decode
images and videos.
To get mouse events in the Linux console, you'll need the GPM daemon running,
and you'll need run cmake
with -DUSE_GPM=on
.
Run unit tests with make test
following a successful build. If you have unit
test failures, please file a bug including the output of
./notcurses-tester -p ../data
(make test
also runs notcurses-tester
, but hides important output).
To watch the bitchin' demo, run make demo
(or ./notcurses-demo -p ../data
).
More details can be found on the notcurses-demo(1)
man page.
Install with make install
following a successful build. This installs the C
core library, the C headers, the C++ library, and the C++ headers (note that
the C headers are C++-safe). It does not install the Python wrappers. To
install the Python wrappers (after installing the core library), run:
cd cffi
python setup.py build
python setup.py install
The Python wrappers are also available from PyPi.
To set the C compiler, export CC
. To set the C++ compiler, export CXX
. The
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE
CMake variable can be defined to any of its standard values,
but must be Debug
for use of USE_COVERAGE
.
DFSG_BUILD
: leave out all content considered non-free under the Debian Free Software Guidelines (defaultoff
)BUILD_TESTING
: build test targets (defaulton
)BUILD_EXECUTABLES
: build executables (in addition to libs) (defaulton
)BUILD_FFI_LIBRARY
: Build ffi library (containing all symbols which are static inline) (defaulton
)USE_ASAN
: build with AddressSanitizer (defaultoff
)USE_CXX
: build C++ code (requires a C++ compiler) (defaulton
)USE_COVERAGE
: build coverage support (for developers, requires use of Clang) (defaultoff
)USE_DOCTEST
: buildnotcurses-tester
with Doctest, requiresBUILD_TESTING
andUSE_CXX
(defaulton
)USE_DOXYGEN
: build interlinked HTML documentation with Doxygen (defaultoff
)USE_GPM
: build GPM console mouse support via libgpm (defaultoff
)USE_MULTIMEDIA
:ffmpeg
for FFmpeg,oiio
for OpenImageIO,none
for none (defaultffmpeg
)oiio
cannot be used withUSE_CXX=off
USE_PANDOC
: build man pages with pandoc (defaulton
)USE_POC
: build small, uninstalled proof-of-concept binaries (defaulton
)USE_QRCODEGEN
: build qrcode support via libqrcodegen (defaultoff
)USE_STATIC
: build static libraries (in addition to shared ones) (defaulton
)