Building Blender

= Building Blender =

Instructions
Steps to build Blender from scratch for each operating system.


 * on Linux
 * on macOS
 * on Windows

Resolving Build Failures
Most building problems are not actually errors in Blender's source code, although you can never fully rule out that possibility. See troubleshooting page for possible causes and where to get help.

Build System
Blender uses the CMake build system.

make wrapper
For quick setup, the make wrapper takes care of setting up CMake automatically, and has quick commands for various tasks. It must be run from the Blender repository root directory. The most important commands are:

Output
By default, make outputs the build and project files to to ../build_&lt;platform&gt;. The Blender executable will be located in ../build_&lt;platform&gt;/bin.

To change this location, see make help or manually run cmake. Be sure to generate the build files in a directory other than the source directory.

Customization
Many CMake options can be set to customize the build. See Build Options for how to configure them.

Setup for Developers
For efficient development of the Blender C/C++ code, install and set up an Editor or IDE to navigate and edit the source code.

For efficient debugging and faster builds, see Build Options for Developers.

Library Dependencies
Details on obtaining libraries are included in each platform's build documentation. See dependencies page for details on how this system works and how to make portable builds.

Other Build Configurations

 * Building Blender as a Python Module
 * Building Cycles with GPU Binaries