Installing Zebra

Follow the Docker or compilation instructions.

Installing Dependencies

To compile Zebra from source, you will need to install some dependencies..

Alternative Compilation Methods

Compiling Manually from git

To compile Zebra directly from GitHub, or from a GitHub release source archive:

  1. Install the dependencies (see above)

  2. Get the source code using git or from a GitHub source package

git clone https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra.git
cd zebra
git checkout v1.6.0
  1. Build and Run zebrad
cargo build --release --bin zebrad
target/release/zebrad start

Compiling from git using cargo install

cargo install --git https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra --tag v1.6.0 zebrad

Compiling on ARM

If you're using an ARM machine, install the Rust compiler for ARM. If you build using the x86_64 tools, Zebra might run really slowly.

Build Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble with:

Compilers

  • clang: install both libclang and clang - they are usually different packages
  • libclang: check out the clang-sys documentation
  • g++ or MSVC++: try using clang or Xcode instead
  • rustc: use the latest stable rustc and cargo versions
    • Zebra does not have a minimum supported Rust version (MSRV) policy: any release can update the required Rust version.

Dependencies

  • use cargo install without --locked to build with the latest versions of each dependency

Experimental Shielded Scanning feature

  • install the rocksdb-tools or rocksdb packages to get the ldb binary, which allows expert users to query the scanner database. This binary is sometimes called rocksdb_ldb.

Optional Tor feature

  • sqlite linker errors: libsqlite3 is an optional dependency of the zebra-network/tor feature. If you don't have it installed, you might see errors like note: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lsqlite3. Follow the arti instructions to install libsqlite3, or use one of these commands instead:
cargo build
cargo build -p zebrad --all-features